— James Baldwin, “Open Letter to the Born Again” (September 29, 1979). Quoted in Hamid Dabashi, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket Books, 2025): 159.

Baldwin’s assessment is shared by many others, such as Noam Chomsky, who discussed in his book (The Fateful Triangle, 1999 edition) Israel’s role as a “strategic asset.” (p. 69, 70, 103, 137) However, others, such as Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone countered that assessment in a 2024 article, “The Myth of Israel as ‘US Aircraft Carrier’ in Middle East.” They write:

But the crucial evidence, totally missing from their analysis, is the slightest example of Israel actually serving American interests in the region.

If no examples are given, it’s simply because there are none. Israel has never fired a shot on behalf of the United States or brought a drop of oil under U.S. control.

We can start with a common sense argument: If the U.S. is interested in Middle East oil, why would it support a country that is hated (for whatever reasons) by all the populations of the oil producing countries?

Bricmont and Johnstone attribute the unstinting US support of Israel as being influenced by money injected into the US political arena by the Jewish lobby, in particular AIPAC.

The question of which side leads in determining US support for Israel is debatable. What is indisputable is that the US and Israel are in lockstep despite all the violations of international law by Israel (US is a serial violator of international law, as well), despite several massacres carried out by Israel, and despite the mightily ramped up genocide being perpetrated by Israeli Jews against Palestinians currently.

Genocide and the understanding of what unleashes the bloodshirtiest of human actions is the subject of Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery, scheduled for release by Haymarket Books on 30 September — while the savagery is ongoing. The urgency for a worldwide response calls for informing those unaware or those insouciant to the Jewish Israeli genocide that is being perpetrated on Palestine (It is not just a genocide in Gaza, as a 1 July 2025 Al Jazeera headline makes clear: “Israel has killed 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.”). After Savagery, however, is not just about the genocide in Gaza, it is about why some humans commit genocide. So After Savagery is also about “before savagery.” What are the conditions that lead to savagery today. And most importantly, how genocide can be prevented from happening.

Dabashi quotes many sources to attest to the genocide that is happening now in Palestine.

“What we are seeing in Gaza is a repeat of Auschwitz,” says the Burmese genocide expert and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Maung Zarni. “This is a collective white imperialist man’s genocide,” he further explains. (154-155)

Asked to describe what he witnessed in Gaza, Dr. Perlmutter replied, “All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined—forty mission trips, thirty years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined—doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.” And the civilian casualties, he said, are almost exclusively children. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week … missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice.” (103-104)

“Yes, it is genocide,” has affirmed Amos Goldberg, a professor of Holocaust history at the department of Jewish history and contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: “It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion.” (142)

Dabashi traces the roots of Zionism to a longstanding settler-European colonialism. And the author lays bare the insidiousness of Zionism and how this racism impacted Palestinians:

Today, the birth of Palestine as a “question” rather than a nation-state marks precisely the birth of Palestine as a constellation of refugee camps. The land was stolen from Palestinians, the state stealing the land was a European settler colony garrison state that rules over Palestinians with cruelty, the rules for the inscription of life were dictated to Palestinians in draconian terms, and the camps as the fourth inseparable element are precisely where generations of Palestinians are born and raised, before being killed by the Israeli military. (127-128)

Part of this racism towards Muslims, of which the majority of Palestinians are, is the use of term “Muselmann.” Writes Dabashi, “This is perhaps a mini encyclopedia of European ignorance, Islamophobia and antisemitism all wrapped up in an attempt to unpack the word ‘Muselmann,’ but in fact loading it with more racist dimensions.” (120) And the new Muselmann, is the Palestinian, “the Untestifiable, the human animal, as Israeli warlords have said.” (xxvi)

Zionist Israel and its racism and discrimination is compellingly described. My colleague B.J. Sabri and I needed no convincing of Israeli racism.¹

And this racism, not exclusive to Israeli Jews, points to “what ultimately matters for the world at large is the categorical inability to fathom a Palestinian as a human being.” (96) Thus, “Witnessing this savagery in Gaza, we can clearly link the Jewish Holocaust to the Palestinian genocide, and see genocidal Zionism  as the logical colonial extension of European fascism.” (xv)

Before Savagery

Many personages appear in After Savagery, such as, to name a few, Sven Lindqvist, Frantz Fanon, Joseph Conrad, and James Baldwin who opposed racism; Edward Said, Giorgio Agamben, Ghassan Kanafani and his Danish wife Anni Kanafani (née Høver), Mario Rizzi, Mahmoud Darwish who spoke to the beauty of Orientalism and Arab culture; others such as Ilan Pappe and UN special rappateur Francesca Albanese who denounce unflinchingly the depredations of Israeli Jews against Palestinians. Dabashi delves deeply into the Eurocentric perspective on colonialism, borne of Western philosophy and figures like Immanuel Kant, Hegel Heidegger, and others who thinking was impoverished by being shackled by their own racism.

Dabashi writes:

“According to Hegel, Africans, or any other people, can only become civilized to the degree and so far as they abandoned their own cultures and convert to Christianity, founding a state according to Christian principles.” (91)

How are “we” to escape the indoctrination of feted philosophers and the inculcation of Western thought? How do “we” humanize Palestinians? The mere fact that the humanity of Palestinians requires affirmation for so many people points to the pervasiveness of racist Eurocentric narratives.

After the unbridled savagery in Gaza, it is not only European philosophy that reaches its ignoble ends. We need equally to think of the modes of knowledge production about Gaza itself, about Palestine, as the simulacrum of the world outside the purview of the discredited Eurocentric imagination. We no longer need to worry about the critique of Orientalism. We need to think of how to produce knowledge about Gaza and Palestine and the rest of the world. We need to reverse the anthropological gaze, to produce an anthropology of Zionism and Western Philosophy. (105)

The book covers a lot of ground. It delves deeply into ontology, epistemology, semantics, literature, art, filmmaking, poetry, politics, religion, exilism, and — especially — philosophy. After Savagery is not focused solely on the here and now of what is transpiring in historical Palestine. The book goes into the history, background, and philosophy that enables genocide. The book is scholarly and is well footnoted. If that is what the reader is looking for, then Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery is well worth the read.

NOTE:

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

Making matters worse, ADF is actively involved in at least one case, Heaps v. Delaware Valley Regional High School Board of Education, that is set to come before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. That means, if confirmed, Bove could preside over cases involving an organization he consulted with during his nomination process – a fundamental breach of judicial ethics.

“The red flags on Emil Bove’s judicial nomination are piling up. Bove has shown unflinching loyalty to his former client and current boss, Donald Trump; has refused to commit to recusing himself on cases involving the President; and is the subject of a whistleblower complaint casting doubt on his integrity and highlighting his lack of respect for the law. Now it’s clear that he has also conferred with a far-right legal organization that has matters before the court on which he would serve,” said Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone. “Bove has repeatedly disregarded the ethical standards of the federal judiciary and the rule of law – his lifetime appointment opens the door for the President and his allies to seek out favorable rulings, no matter how unconstitutional their actions may be. Trust in the judiciary is at an all-time low because of repeated ethical lapses. If the Senate confirms Bove, it will undermine the credibility of the court even further.”

It’s just the latest disqualification for Bove, who is under a whistleblower investigation for misconduct while at the Department of Justice, and has come to be known as the Administration's “hatchet man.” Earlier this month, an Accountable.US research report revealed that Bove has not committed to key recusals ahead of his nomination hearing. In a nomination form, Bove pledged to recuse himself from “situations that present actual conflicts of interest based on my current or prior positions at the Department of Justice” – but he’s refrained from preemptively recusing himself from any future case involving his former client and current boss, Donald Trump.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

In the end, the industry breathed a small sigh of relief after the Senate reached a compromise that would, at least in principle, give new projects a slim window to go ahead. Under the final law, wind and solar projects that begin construction by July 4 of next year are eligible for the full federal tax credits. Halfway through that window, a new requirement kicks in: Projects that begin construction after January 1, 2026, can only keep the tax credits if they follow restrictions on the use of Chinese materials.

That could still upend New York’s renewable energy transition.

Federal tax credits have typically covered almost a third of the cost of building a solar or wind farm. That’s made them “critical to financing and ultimately building renewable energy projects,” said Carl Weatherley-White, interim chief financial officer at the development firm Greenbacker, which is currently building New York’s largest solar farm and has several smaller projects in the works. “It’s been a core part of the business for 20 years.”

The bill will also impact New York’s public power authority, NYPA, which this year issued a plan to put up more than three gigawatts’ worth of solar and batteries, and has been counting on federal tax credits to deliver.

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Developers now have less than a year to start digging if they want the subsidies. The impending deadline is lighting a fire under the industry — and, developers hope, under New York’s leaders, too.

“Now, the game is in the states,” said Marguerite Wells, executive director of the renewable energy lobbying group Alliance for Clean Energy New York. “I would say there’s many thousands of megawatts’ worth of wind and solar in upstate that would be eligible to fall into that start of construction if we played the cards right.”

For a start, there are 26 permitted but unbuilt wind and solar projects in the state, which in total could unlock about 3,000 megawatts’ worth of energy — enough to power some half a million homes. Only two of the large projects the state has approved in the last four years have even started construction; one of them was completed in late 2024, more than six years after filing its first paperwork. (The most recent permit was issued last week, but most of the permits date back to 2023 or earlier.)

The problem? The state doesn’t make it easy to move quickly. It normally takes years for wind and solar projects just to get permits to begin construction in New York, despite reforms intended to speed up the process. The rest of the approval process can take years, too. More environmental reviews are required even after the main permit is approved. And it’s just as complicated getting approval to connect to the grid.

All told, at least three different sets of regulators have to weigh in before a company can put shovels in the ground. That makes New York far more restrictive than other states in allowing developers to start building.

There are things the state could do to speed things up, like allowing developers to start construction even while they finalize certain details of their projects, but it’s largely in Governor Kathy Hochul’s hands.

Jolting the process forward would require a concerted push across her agencies. Besides permits, building a wind or solar farm in New York requires a contract with the state’s energy research and development arm, NYSERDA, guaranteeing that the developer will get paid for the energy the facility produces. Sometimes it requires the state Department of Environmental Conservation to weigh in on water quality plans, with additional input from the US Army Corps of Engineers. And it requires the state’s grid operator — which acts independently — to assess the impact and cost of connecting the facility to the grid.

Developers need answers from all of those entities before they can break ground, Wells said: “Every last whisper of detail of the project has to be finalized before they generally let you start construction.”

In her eyes, improving coordination between all of New York’s energy regulators is the single biggest thing the state could do to help move construction forward.

It’s not yet clear how committed Hochul is to the effort.

“The Governor has directed the state’s energy agencies to conduct a high-level review of the federal legislation and specific impacts to New Yorkers,” spokesperson Ken Lovett told New York Focus, when asked whether the Hochul administration shared developers’ goal of accelerating construction.

Before most developers even had a chance to fully digest the changes coming down from Congress, Trump threw in another gut punch. Last week, he issued an executive order directing the Treasury Department, which enforces tax credit rules, to revisit how it defines a project’s “start of construction.”

That throws even the megabill’s one-year deadline into doubt. Historically, developers have been allowed to qualify for tax credits by proving either that they’ve started physical construction or spent a certain amount of money. Now, Trump has given federal regulators 45 days to revise those definitions.

The specific definitions that the Treasury adopts could prove decisive in some cases. But whatever exact language the administration lands on, the bottom line is that Trump still has significant leeway to kill wind and solar projects if he’s committed to it, said Advait Arun, senior associate for energy finance at the think tank Center for Public Enterprise.

“Simply, I think Trump is trying to use control over the IRS to exercise his judgment about what projects should proceed and what shouldn’t,” he said.

Trump will have even more sway after the end of this calendar year, when additional requirements kick in. Starting in January 2026, developers hoping to claim tax credits will have to abide by restrictions on sourcing from “Foreign Entities of Concern,” including those connected to the Chinese government. The megabill tasks the Treasury with updating those rules, giving Trump another opportunity to crack down on what he’s called the “Green New Scam.”

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It all adds up to shaky terrain for renewable developers, even those who stand a chance of getting shovels in the ground within a year.

“The big concern … is that no matter what we do, someone in the Treasury is going to just say no,” said Weatherley-White, of Greenbacker, speaking to New York Focus a few hours before Trump issued his executive order last week. (Reporting earlier this month had already suggested that the construction rules could be in the crosshairs.)

Neither Weatherley-White nor Wells, of ACE NY, responded to follow-up inquiries about the order.

Unless the Trump administration completely upends what counts as the “start of construction,” there’s still a lot New York could do to help more projects get in under the one-year bar.

For example, in many states, wind and solar developers can begin construction on projects that don’t have all of their final approvals, but have the main elements of their design — like the location of roads and buildings — agreed upon, Wells said. But in New York, that initial green light is hard to get. It would make a big difference if the state were to adopt the practice more readily, she said.

New York could also jumpstart the contracting process for wind and solar projects. Close to half of the state’s permitted but unbuilt projects had contracts that were canceled after post-pandemic inflation upended their finances. Over the last year, the state has announced new contracts for dozens of projects in this situation, but others remain in limbo.

NYSERDA had plans to kick off a fresh round of wind and solar contracting by the end of June, but it’s behind schedule. A spokesperson said the agency would begin the process by the end of September.

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Those nitty-gritty steps are unlikely to change, though, unless Hochul makes it a priority. The governor could direct agencies to fast track permitting or contracts, as she did with offshore wind a couple of years ago. She has lately shown a keen interest in cutting red tape for other forms of energy — specifically, a nuclear plant that she has tasked NYPA to build by 2040. (There, though, the key approvals need to come from the Trump administration rather than her own.)

Her Department of Environmental Conservation also appears to be speeding along a revived pipeline project that would bring gas into New York City and Long Island. The agency said earlier this month that it had received a complete application from the pipeline company and opened a 30-day comment period with no public hearing. The notice came just five weeks after it was revealed that the state would reconsider the previously abandoned project — reportedly as part of a deal with the Trump administration to allow a major offshore wind project to move ahead, though Hochul’s office has denied a quid pro quo.

Renewable developers, by contrast, can spend years applying and reapplying for permits before they’re allowed to proceed to a mandatory, 60-day public comment period.

“If we’re cutting red tape for other forms of energy, we should cut red tape for renewable energy, too,” Wells said.

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Whether any wind or solar projects remain viable in New York after the federal tax credits expire remains an open question. Although Trump has framed his efforts as rolling back Biden-era policies, solar and wind tax credits date as far back as the 1970s, and have remained largely steady since 2005.

Some, like Weatherley-White, remain optimistic that the renewable industry can learn to live without them.

“The renewable energy industry has adapted to lots of changes over time,” he said, suggesting that developers could find ways to cut costs to cushion the blow from losing the tax credits.

“Unfortunately, there will be losers and winners,” Weatherley-White continued. “I think we’re going to see some short-term pain. But in the long run or medium term, let’s say, I think people will adapt and succeed.”

The labor coalition Climate Jobs NY struck a similarly bullish tone in a statement earlier this month. “With or without the support from our federal lawmakers, union workers in New York will find ways to build the pro-worker clean energy economy we need,” the group wrote.

Others see the glass half empty. Arun said that a key part of how the industry hoped to bring down costs was by using tax credits to build momentum and standardize the development process.

“If you can’t build, there’s no standardization or lowering costs through economies of scale,” he said. “And that’s what I’m really worried about.”

Hochul’s office, too, is striking a sober note.

“The federal budget bill slashes the very tools states need to achieve energy independence and economic growth,” Lovett said, “and no state will be able to backfill the massive cuts they face across so many key areas.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The race to build solar and wind in New York before Trump’s tax credit deadline on Jul 19, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Colin Kinniburgh.

From a climate perspective, the legislation’s most significant rollbacks are aimed at industries, such as renewable energy, not individuals. But there will be very real impacts for taxpayers hoping to decarbonize their homes.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, provided tax credits for climate-friendly purchases ranging from heat pumps to solar arrays through 2032. That timeframe has been cut to as little as a few months.

“This bill is going to take away a lot of assistance from consumers,” said Lowell Ungar, director of federal policy for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. He noted that 2 million people used the home improvement tax credit in its first year alone.

The good news is that the bill does not affect the billions of dollars that the IRA already sent to state efficiency and electrification rebate programs, and that much of that money will remain available beyond the federal sunsets. But, Ungar added, the tax credits can still save people thousands of dollars before they vanish. 

“If consumers are able to make the investment now,” he said, “it will help them out.”

For those looking to act, here is a roundup of when credits will be going away. 

Buy an EV before October

New electric vehicles that meet federal domestic manufacturing requirements qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500. While credits on foreign-made EVs aren’t offered directly to consumers, automakers do get them and often pass the savings along through leases. Used EVs under $25,000 that are purchased at a dealer are also eligible for up to a $4,000 credit. 

All of this goes away on September 30. There will be no credits after that. Ultimately, this will make new electric vehicles more expensive and put the technology further out of reach for low to moderate income Americans. 

The income caps on the EV credits still apply, limiting the benefit on new EVs to those households earning less than $300,000 and on used vehicles to those earning less than $150,000. There is an MSRP limit of $80,000 for new cars too.

Strangely, the tax credit for installing an EV charger (up to $1,000) runs through June of next year. 

Make home improvements by end of the year

The remarkably vast Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit provides up to $2,000 toward qualified heat pumps, water heaters, biomass stoves or biomass boilers. It offers another $1,200 toward efficiency upgrades such as insulation, doors, windows and even home energy audits. 

These are going away on December 31. All items must be “placed in service” by then in order to qualify, though a reminder: Tax credits lower your tax liability, but don’t come back as rebates. You must have a tax bill in order to benefit, which may not be the case for certain low-income households. 

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Pay for solar this year

The most valuable IRA incentive being axed is the Residential Clean Energy Credit. It covers 30 percent of clean energy systems such as solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal heat pumps, and there is no cap. With the average cost of a solar system in the U.S. just north of $28,000, that means a tax credit would be worth around $8,500. That credit vanishes at the end of this year, though the law refers to the “expentitures” being made by then so that could mean paying for — but not necessarily installing — a system by then. 

Like with other credits, Ungar suggests confirming any changes with a tax professional. He also said that the potential for higher tariffs is another reason to move quickly. But, he said, even after the credits go away, many of these improvements could still make financial sense over the long term. 

“With or without the tax credit, these improvements bring energy savings that lowers energy bills,” he said. “In some cases, improvements are going to be a no-brainer regardless.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Congress is killing clean energy tax credits. Here’s how to use them before they disappear. on Jul 9, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

Disasters can feel overwhelming if you’re an immigrant, whether it’s because of your citizenship status, language barriers, or confusion around your rights. It’s important to remember that trusted community networks exist, along with other helpful resources. This guide offers up-to-date information on some of those resources, as well as examples of community organizing and policy work that have made it easier for immigrants to find help. It also includes best practices for navigating disaster relief and recovery at a time when there is a heightened risk of deportation for certain immigrants. This information is fact-checked and will be updated periodically as laws, practices, and resources change.

Jump to:

↓ Finding reliable information
↓ Government services in your language
↓ How federal disaster aid works
↓ What to do if you encounter ICE
↓ Best practices for staying safe
↓ How to advocate for better resources

Finding reliable information

Vetted federal, state, and community resources can help you find accurate, trustworthy information in the event of a disaster.

Dial 211

When you dial 211, you will be referred to the Federal Communications Commission’s free community services directory. This can be a key step in accessing public services. It works similar to 911, where an operator will answer the call and assist you in finding what you need, including services for non-English speakers.

Independent news outlets

News publications that serve non-English speaking individuals often provide emergency resource guides that don’t exist in traditional media. Look for an outlet published in your language in your area. Here are some examples:

• El Tímpano in California offers an emergency resource guide in Spanish.
• To prepare for this year’s hurricane season, Enlace Latino NC published an article in Spanish on how to obtain free National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, radios through the city of Raleigh, North Carolina. Radio is a primary means of communicating emergency alerts and weather information in the U.S. and can be especially useful during power outages.
• Grist published a guide in Spanish and Haitian Creole for Florida farmworkers during the 2024 hurricane season.

Immigrant rights organizations

Across the country, immigrant rights organizations offer an array of services and tips that can be helpful in disaster situations. These are trusted groups who offer support and advocate for change year-round, not just during disasters. Searching online for local organizations that focus specifically on immigrant and labor issues — by typing in the name of your state and the phrases “immigrant rights” or “worker rights” — is a great way to begin looking for support. The tools highlighted below can also inspire other search terms for your own state, like “disaster preparedness toolkit in Spanish,” for example.

• In North Carolina, the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry released a video series in Spanish to help immigrant communities and their families prepare for disasters and recuperate in the aftermath. This video explaining how emergency alerts work is applicable to any U.S. state.
• In Oregon, the farmworker union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, or PCUN, made a disaster preparedness toolkit in Spanish available for free on Google Drive.
• You can get involved in spreading the word throughout your own community with the help of available, trusted resources. PCUN also offers free social media graphics about the dangers of heat stress and what to do to stay safe at home and on the job.

Many of these organizations also offer legal refreshers for immigrants to understand their rights, which can be impacted by the presence of federal agents at disaster sites. You can read more about that below, under “What to do if you encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE” and “Best practices for staying safe.”

Government services in your language

Federal civil rights law requires any entity receiving federal funding — including virtually all state and local agencies — to provide language access to individuals with limited proficiency in English. And in recent years, an increasing number of local and state government agencies have amped up their language access policies as a result of organizing among community members and immigrant organizations.

In 2023, wildfires spread through the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, Hawai‘i. In the immediate aftermath, the 30 percent of Lahaina residents with limited proficiency in English had trouble accessing emergency information. Liza Ryan-Gill, the executive director of the Hawai‘i Coalition for Immigrant Rights, spent two days organizing calls with at least 80 community advocates to figure out how to get information to immigrant communities who needed it — in languages they could understand. In 2024, after advocates organized for federal funds to be allocated to local emergency management for language access, Hawai‘i passed HB 2107 and hired a limited English proficiency access coordinator for the state’s emergency management department. Now all emergency resources in the state are translated into at least seven languages.

Other states have taken similar steps: In Michigan, a 2023 law requires translation and interpretation services for languages spoken by individuals with limited English proficiency who comprise at least 3 percent of the population, or 500 individuals, in the region served by a given state agency. New York updated its language access policy in 2022 to cover the 12 most common non-English languages spoken by state residents with limited English proficiency.

While most cities and states do not require agencies to proactively translate documents and resources into specific languages, it is worth checking with your local government and emergency management agencies. If they don’t already provide information in the language you speak, you can request it.

Emergency management agencies: Your city or county has an emergency management department, which is part of the local government. Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating with other agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those texts now. Some cities have multiple languages available, but most emergency alerts are only in English. Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates as well.

If you’re having trouble finding your local department, Grist suggests typing your city or county name followed by “emergency management” into Google. You can also search for your state or territory’s emergency management department, which serves a similar function for a larger jurisdiction. Every website looks different, but many of them include translation options at the top or bottom of every page. You can also use Google Translate, or another browser-based automatic language detection program, to automatically translate any webpage.

National Weather Service: This agency, often called NWS, offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your zip code on weather.gov and customize your homepage to get the most updated weather information and receive alerts for a variety of weather conditions. The NWS also sends out localized emergency weather alerts to people’s cell phones via wireless networks, to television and radio stations, and to NOAA Weather Radio, which can receive NWS broadcasts. (Make sure you’ve opted into receiving emergency alerts in your phone settings.) Some local NWS offices automatically translate local alerts into multiple languages — including Chinese, Vietnamese, French, Samoan, and Spanish — in real time.

Read more: How to prepare for a disaster

How federal disaster aid works

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is the federal government’s main disaster response agency. It is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS. Often, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which is also under DHS, is enlisted to help after a disaster. In 2021, the Biden administration issued guidance designating places where disaster or emergency response and relief are provided as “protected areas” where immigration agents should not engage in enforcement actions. However, in January, the Trump administration rescinded that policy.

Still, experts and immigrant advocates on a national level emphasize that FEMA offers non-financial aid to anyone regardless of immigration status. This includes shelter, emergency supplies, counseling, and other resources. In order to apply for financial aid, someone in your family must be a U.S. citizen; this could be a child. A household should only apply for financial aid once per disaster, according to FEMA guidance. If more than one family member submits an application, it will cause delays in the process.

“The reassurance right now is that nothing has changed in the field,” said Ahmed Gaya, director of the Climate Justice Collaborative at the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of 82 state and local immigrant and refugee organizations.

He added that “our communities’ trust in the federal government and trust in FEMA and DHS is at a historic low,” but that the law has not changed and that undocumented folks are still eligible for immediate emergency relief. “There’s a real, credible fear that there is a shift in leadership at DHS, in administration and in the rhetoric. But legal rights remain the same currently.”

As of June 2025, Gaya said, “We have not had reports from the field of FEMA’s practices and policies deviating dramatically from how they have typically gone in regards to dealing with mixed status and undocumented communities.”

Read more: How the agencies and officials involved in emergency response work

What to do if you encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE

“You probably wouldn’t see ICE officers at disaster shelters requesting documents, but we can’t predict how ICE will behave,” says Rich Stolz, a colleague of Gaya who is also a Senior Fellow with Just Solutions, focusing on the intersection of climate justice and immigrant rights strategy and organizing. “The challenge for advocates and emergency groups is making sure that people can make informed decisions. The concern is that people will be under even more stress in a disaster context, and they may forget their rights.”

It can be helpful to have a red card, or tarjeta roja, with you to show to ICE agents in the event of questioning. These cards outline your rights — like the right to remain silent and to talk to a lawyer — and anyone can order them online. They are available through the National Immigration Law Center in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

There are several “know your rights” guides for immigrants that apply in all situations, not just disasters:

• The National Immigration Law Center provides a Know Your Rights guide recommended by legal experts. It is available in Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.
• The National Immigrant Justice Center offers a guide available in Spanish, Haitian Creole, French, and English that includes laws to know, sample warrants, and helplines. 
• The National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the National TPS Alliance (an organization for people with temporary protected status) put together an illustrated guide to your rights in English and Spanish. On page 2, you can find step-by-step instructions on what to do if ICE stops you on the street or in a public space. 

Best practices for staying safe

Accessing emergency shelter and supplies

You shouldn’t need identification to receive emergency supplies or stay at most emergency shelters, but you may be asked to provide some. Identification may include a photo or non-photo ID; it does not necessarily mean you need to supply a driver’s license, passport, or social security number. Some organizations offer community IDs for those who do not qualify for a state-issued ID. These may not be accepted depending on the county or location.

The Red Cross, which operates shelters after major disasters, says it does not ask for any documentation of legal status when providing aid.

Read more: How to access food before, during, and after a disaster

Going to a shelter or government-run site can be intimidating. Here are some other tips gathered from immigrant rights organizations:

• Use the buddy system: There is safety in numbers. Go with multiple people to feel more confident in getting the help you need. 
• Find an English speaker: Someone who speaks English may be able to help you get services if you are worried about language barriers.
• Request language interpretation: When talking to police, firefighters, or hospital workers, you have a legal right to an interpreter. Other agencies and institutions may have access to interpreters and translators as well.
• Contact an advocacy organization: Farmworker and immigrant advocacy organizations may be able to help you get the supplies and food you need at a safe space.
• Talk to your faith community: Speak with your local pastor, members of your place of worship, or someone else you trust about your options.

Support for disaster workers

If you are an immigrant disaster worker, day laborer, or second responder, you have rights and are legally protected by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. Day labor worker centers and labor unions are excellent resources if you have any questions regarding safety on the job. The Resilience Force put together easy-to-read illustrated guides in Spanish and English for workers specifically working in disaster recovery.

How to advocate for better resources

Each disaster has ripple effects. That’s why organizations that were not built to deal with disaster relief or response are often taking on that responsibility. “All of us need to figure that out,” said Marisol Jimenez, founder of Tepeyac Consulting, a business based in Asheville, North Carolina, for community organizers around the country. “We’re not disaster organizations, but how do we integrate this into all of our work?”

Here are some of the resources being created to help communities organize for change:

• Stolz, Gaya, and their Just Solutions colleagues representing Organizing Resilience, National Partnership for New Americans, National Immigration Law Center, and other groups plan to release a resource guide on disaster response as it relates to the Trump administration’s policies for ICE. A similar rapid response kit was published in 2022.
• Researcher Melissa Villarreal at the Natural Hazards Center in Colorado put together an annotated bibliography of academic articles, government reports, and news reports related to emergencies and language access. You can use these examples when advocating for policy change where you live.

Disasters cause communities to spring into action out of necessity, which can result in positive pressure on local governments. The more you can stay connected to your community and trusted local organizations, the more you can create change and better policies that keep immigrants safe and supported.

“So much depends on grassroots organizations actually having a presence and a plan and a strategy,” said Stolz. “A community’s ability to survive and thrive and recover is largely dependent on the existing community cohesion and relationships that exist.”

Download a PDF of this article | Return to Disaster 101

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Know your rights as an immigrant before, during, and after disasters on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Victoria Bouloubasis.

Surviving a severe storm, wildfire, or other extreme weather event is an experience that many Americans have had, or will have in the future, as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters. According to 2024 polling from the Pew Research Center, 7 in 10 Americans said their community experienced an extreme weather event in the past 12 months, including flooding, drought, extreme heat, rising sea levels, or major wildfires.

The aftermath of a disaster can be terrifying and traumatic, and many survivors struggle to secure basic necessities such as food and shelter, or to fill out paperwork for disaster aid and insurance. Finding accurate information about where and how to vote is even harder — so hard, in fact, that many people who have experienced disasters don’t bother to vote at all. With experts forecasting active hurricane and wildfire seasons, it’s more important than ever to be prepared for disruptions to the voting process for any primaries and special elections, as well as Election Day in November.

The guide below aims to help you navigate early and absentee voting, as well as what to expect on Election Day, should a disaster affect your area. (If you’re not registered to vote, find your state’s voter registration rules below.)

Jump to:

↓ Registration information
↓ In-person voting
↓ Early voting
↓ Absentee ballots
↓ Voter ID laws
↓ Know your rights

Registration information

Register to vote or find out if you’re registered here. Since it’s hurricane season, we’ve included registration links and upcoming election information for coastal states below:

Florida: Register to vote or check your registration here. Stay updated on Florida election dates here.

Alabama: Register to vote here. Stay updated on Florida election dates here.

Mississippi: Mississippi does not have online registration, so find out how to do so in person or online here. The deadline to register is 30 days before election day. Stay updated on Mississippi election dates here.

North Carolina: The deadline for voter registration is 25 days before Election Day; register or check your status here. Stay updated on North Carolina election dates here.

South Carolina: Learn how to register here. Stay updated on South Carolina election dates here.

Louisiana: Online registration must be done 20 days before Election Day; mail must be postmarked 30 days prior. Stay updated on Louisiana election dates here.

Georgia: Register online here. Stay updated on Georgia election dates here.

Texas: You must register to vote 30 days before Election Day; find out your status or register here. Stay updated on Texas election dates here.

Read more: How a disaster is officially declared

In-person voting

If a disaster strikes, the governor can extend voting deadlines, allow ballots to be forwarded to a new address, allow local officials to change or add new polling places, or postpone municipal elections. Those rules are different depending on the state, and information may be hard to find in the wake of a disaster.

The U.S. Vote Foundation has a tool to access your county election office’s contact information, which typically includes county clerks, supervisors, auditors, boards of elections, or election commissions, depending on the state. You can try to contact these offices, but it’s not guaranteed they’ll be able to answer your questions. You can also ask voting rights groups in your area and watch local news for any changes or updates.

In the wake of a disaster, first confirm where you should be voting. Has your polling place been damaged or moved? If multiple locations are combined into one, or Election Day volunteers are scarce post-disaster, be prepared to stand in long lines to vote. If you’re waiting in the heat, make sure to bring water and wear comfortable shoes and appropriate clothing. (Twenty-one states prohibit campaign apparel, so keep that in mind.) Here are some other resources on heat waves.

Was your car damaged in a disaster? Need a ride to the polls? Some ride-share services and public transit systems offer free rides on Election Day. Here’s more information.

Read more: The officials and agencies in charge of disaster response

Early voting

Most states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands offer some form of early voting, which is voting in person before the election anywhere from a few days to more than a month early, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, the hours, locations, and timing differ for each. Three states — Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire — do not allow early in-person voting.

Early in-person voting is a useful option if you’d like to avoid lines on Election Day or will be out of town. It’s also an option for people who live in a region of the country prone to natural disasters or have been recently hit by one. In-person voting on Election Day, which comes at the tail end of “danger season,” may not either be a possibility or priority. Go here to see the specific rules around early voting in your state.

Absentee ballots

Absentee voting is often called “mail-in voting” or “by-mail voting.” Every state offers this, but some require you to meet certain conditions, like having a valid excuse for why you can’t make it to the polls on Election Day. Absentee voting can be a particularly useful tool for people recently displaced by extreme weather, or are at risk of being displaced. It also safeguards voters who live in the hottest parts of the country, where heat can make waiting in long lines dangerous.

The League of Women Voters explains absentee voting rules by state here. If you reside in a county that gets a federal disaster declaration after a disaster hits, there may be changes to these processes that can offer you more time and flexibility.

Voter ID laws

Each state has a different voter ID law: Some require photo identification, others require a document such as a utility bill, bank statement, or paycheck, while still others require a signature. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a breakdown of the rules here.

If your ID gets destroyed in a flood, fire, or tornado, your state may be able to exempt you from showing an ID at the polls. For instance, after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Texas residents who lost their ID to floodwaters could vote without one once they filled out an affidavit stating that their identification was lost because of a natural disaster. Your state may also waive the fees associated with getting a new ID.

The best way to find this information is to contact your county clerk or other election official, or contact a voting rights group in your area.

Know your rights

Just as there are strict rules in states around how people can cast ballots, there are also many others that dictate what happens outside of polling places. In most states, you can accept water and food from groups around polling places — but there is misinformation around doing so. For example, after the 2020 presidential election, Georgia passed a law prohibiting this activity within a certain buffer zone, only for a judge to later strike down part of it. So while there is no longer a ban on handing things to voters within 25 feet of the line to vote, it is still illegal to do so within 150 feet of the building where ballots are being cast.

Call or text 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to report voter intimidation to the Election Protection Coalition. You can also find more information on voter rights from the ACLU.

Download a PDF of this article | Return to Disaster 101

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Know your voting rights before, during, and after a disaster on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lyndsey Gilpin.

We’ve compiled a guide to food safety and access based on recommendations from physicians, health departments, emergency management departments, and federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, and the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA.

Jump to:

↓ Preparing food supplies at home
↓ Accessing food
↓ How to navigate food distribution if you’re not a U.S. citizen
↓ What to know about hunger and disasters

Preparing your food supplies at home

As you prepare for an extreme weather event, it’s important to have enough food ready and easily transportable in case you lose power or need to evacuate. Review this checklist from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for what to pack so you can stay safe, hydrated, and healthy.

Read more: How to pack an emergency kit and prepare your home

State and county emergency-management departments offer varying guidelines on how to best prepare food supplies for a disaster. For instance, some counties in Florida suggest residents stock up enough food to last them at least two weeks in case of an emergency, while some in Massachusetts suggest a minimum of three days.

It’s becoming increasingly expensive to buy everything for an emergency stockpile all at once. A more affordable strategy is to pick up one or two items every time you go to the grocery store, well in advance of hurricane or wildfire season, and build up your emergency food stockpile over time. You can also contact your local disaster aid organizations, houses of worship, or charities to see if there are free or affordable nonperishable goods available.

Some of the most important things to have:

• Water (at least one gallon per person and pet in the household per day for several days)
• Food (at least a three day supply of nonperishable food for every person and pet in a household)
• Common kitchen tools like scissors, a knife, a can opener, and a cooking thermometer

Here are some food-safety tips during and after a disaster:

• If you plan to take shelter away from home, it’s always best to prepare for the likelihood that the power will go out, spoiling refrigerated and frozen food. Be wary about eating food that may have gone bad, and when in doubt, throw it out.
• Buy food with the lowest safety risks. This includes canned food with high liquid content and with limited salt, as salty foods will make you thirsty.

If the power goes out and you’re home, take the following steps to ensure your food will remain safe to eat:

• Keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible. An unopened refrigerator can maintain its temperature for only roughly four hours, while a freezer can stay cold for approximately 48 hours.
• Pack refrigerated and freezer items tightly together to help retain cold temperatures for longer. (This should not be done with ready-to-eat foods or anything raw, such as poultry or fish.)
• Freeze containers of water to use for ice and potentially drinking water.
• If the power outage lasts for more than two hours, or if the refrigerator or freezer temperature rises above 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the FDA recommends that you discard any perishable food. Your appliance may tell you the temperature inside. If it doesn’t have that feature, keep an appliance thermometer handy. You can also use a bulb or candy thermometer by placing it directly into a container of food or liquid that has been in the refrigerator or freezer for 24 hours.

If there is flooding, avoid eating any food that may have come into contact with floodwater, and get rid of any foods or beverages that are not in a waterproof container or have damaged packaging. If food is not damaged or wet, follow these in-depth instructions from the FDA to make sure it’s safe to eat.

Storing food properly can help give it a longer shelf life and protect it from water damage. Here are some tips:

• Store items in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight.
• Place your food supply on high shelves to keep them far from any household flooding.
• If possible, swap foods in paper boxes or cartons into airtight or waterproof containers to keep out pests. 
• Be sure to verify expiration dates on canned and dry goods.
• Store all fresh food away from ranges or refrigerator exhausts. Heat causes many foods to spoil faster.

Accessing food during and after a disaster

Where to find community-led resources on food access

Local nonprofits, food banks, food and agricultural hubs, houses of worship, and schools are all crucial frontline resources in the aftermath of a disaster, providing food and water for people regardless of socioeconomic or immigration status. Before a storm or wildfire hits your area, you can look up where organizations such as these may be in your community. During a disaster, they may offer hot meals and fresh produce, as well as nonperishables.

Recent federal funding cuts have left food banks and charitable food organizations across the country without as much money for direct food assistance, so check with your local food bank to make sure they are running these programs.

Most cities and counties will have a list of sites that are supplying food and water. You can call or check their websites. Also check your local news — either radio, online, or on television — for options.

National and international charitable organizations often deploy on-the-ground teams to distribute free food to areas hit by major disaster events. Typically these groups prioritize places where the scope of damage and population impact is significant. This list of organizations is by no means exhaustive:

• World Central Kitchen
• American Red Cross
• Feeding America
• The Salvation Army
• Team Rubicon
• Americares
• United Way
• Catholic Charities

Your state and county emergency-management departments, government-operated emergency shelters, as well as your city, tribe, or territory, is likely to partner with the school district, food banks, first responders, and federal agencies to set up ad hoc food and water distribution centers in the immediate days following a disaster event. Each entity’s official website and social media pages are great resources for up-to-date information on these efforts.

FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers also tend to serve as a source of food and water after a storm or other disaster.

Read more: How FEMA aid works

Applying for longer-term food relief programs

Depending on your legal status, total household income, and whether your household includes children under 5 years old or a pregnant or breastfeeding mother, you could be eligible for government benefits that include financial assistance for food. Keep in mind that these programs require a lengthy application process, and often have a waiting list long before a disaster strikes. Some of them are also being cut or changed by the Trump administration, so contact the local or state office to find out more.

SNAP: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides food assistance to low-income families to supplement their grocery budgets for foods to prepare at home. In the event of a disaster, you may be able to buy hot or premade food using SNAP dollars. This is not intended for immediate relief, as it could take time to apply and begin receiving any benefits. To apply, you must first contact your local or state SNAP office. Applications are handled differently depending on the state in which you live; some can be submitted online, while others need to be done in person or by mail.

The Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or D-SNAP, also known as disaster food stamps, helps you pay for food if you live in a county with a federal disaster declaration. D-SNAP provides funds on an electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card to pay for food. Even if you do not normally receive or qualify for food assistance through SNAP benefits, you may qualify if you live in a county that has received a federal disaster declaration. This benefit usually amounts to at least a month of the maximum SNAP allotment for low-income households. This is not immediate relief, as it could take time to apply and receive the benefits.

If you’re a SNAP recipient, get benefits that are less than the monthly maximum, and have losses from the disaster, you can request a supplement under D-SNAP. Existing SNAP recipients may also request replacement benefits for food that was bought with SNAP dollars and lost in the disaster.

Be on the lookout for more information about this program through your local news, community organizations, or local SNAP office.

WIC: The Women, Infants, and Children program offers food assistance, information, and health care referrals to low-income families with children under age 5 or those expecting a new child. You can be eligible for WIC with any immigration status. To apply, you will need to contact  your local WIC office to schedule an appointment, where your eligibility will be determined.

TEFAP: The Emergency Food Assistance Program helps supplement the diets of lower-income people by providing emergency food assistance at no cost. TEFAP is distinct from SNAP as it provides actual food, not money, to those in need, distributed through local food banks and pantries. When the president makes a major disaster declaration, affected states are given the opportunity to reallocate and distribute existing TEFAP food and funding inventories to disaster relief organizations. You cannot apply directly for TEFAP foods, but may be able to get TEFAP foods to take home from a local soup kitchen or food pantry based on your income level. 

How to navigate food distribution if you’re not a U.S. citizen

Most of the above federal nutrition programs are not accessible to anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or what the government deems a “qualified immigrant.” Though undocumented immigrants have long been largely ineligible for federal public benefits, there have been some exceptions for emergency and disaster-related services. Lawful permanent residents and qualified immigrants, such as H-2A workers, used to face a five-year or longer waiting period for programs like SNAP, but immigration and anti-hunger advocates suggest that period may be lengthier under the new administration — and the opportunity for noncitizen eligibility for food benefits may even cease to exist. If you have a U.S.-born child, they can qualify for these benefits, though it may not be enough to feed the entire family.

Please note that anyone visiting food centers or shelters may be asked to provide proof of identification. Because of stricter immigration policies enforced under the Trump administration, there is concern among immigration advocates, lawyers, and other experts that undocumented residents, those on a visa, or even legal citizens could be detained by law enforcement or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Connect with your local immigration organizations or legal aid groups for more specific information, advice, and updates.

Read more: Know your rights as an immigrant before, during, and after disasters

What to know about deepening hunger and disasters

As Kassandra Martinchek, who researches food access at the Urban Institute, told Grist in 2024, the immediate emergency food response provided by charitable providers and by federal nutrition programs “is an important part of the broader patchwork of programs that help families post-disaster.” But food insecurity “is really this household economic condition wherein families aren’t able to get the food they need to live a healthy and active life.” Disasters intensify that crisis.

Poverty rates tend to climb in impacted areas because many people, particularly those from low-income households, are less able to prepare for a looming storm or recover from the emotional and physical damage they wreak. This deepens existing racial and socioeconomic divides and exacerbates the food insecurity most commonly experienced by communities of color, those with disabilities, and households below the federal poverty line.

Research shows that food tends to be among the first expenditures financially unstable households cut during economic turbulence. Not only do they buy less food, but the quality of the food they buy decreases as well.

If you or someone you know is struggling with hunger or food insecurity at any time, reach out to churches or other houses of worship, charities, food banks, health care providers (some have food programs they can direct you to), including any of the organizations mentioned above.

Read more: Our long-term recovery guide outlines resources you can use in the weeks and months after a disaster

Download a PDF of this article | Return to Disaster 101

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to access food before, during, and after a disaster on Jul 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

Dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday in Washington, DC, while protesting President Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will dramatically slash taxes, restructure the student loan and debt system, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with Lorraine Chavez and Chrstine Rodriguez, who were among the dozens arrested for their peaceful act of civil disobedience on June 25, about what’s in this bill, what it will mean for working people, and how working people are fighting back

Guests:

• Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago. She is also a student debtor and traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.
• Chrstine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor from Pasadena, California, who also traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.

Additional links/info:

• The Debt Collective website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, “Medicaid defenders in wheelchairs arrested ahead of Senate vote on ‘betrayal of a bill’”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “What’s in Trump’s big, beautiful bill? Tax cuts, deportations and more”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “Senate Republicans pass Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill, clearing major hurdle”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

But those who attended this week’s conference in Bonn, which concluded on Thursday, say that negotiators made only halting progress. While diplomats made headway on measures to help countries adapt to the effects of global warming and prepare their workers for the energy transition, they stalled out on two critical issues that could derail negotiations at COP30, this year’s United Nations climate conference in Belém, Brazil, in November. As a result, there is still little clarity on the path to mobilizing $1.3 trillion in climate-related funding for developing nations, a key promise made at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, last year. Countries also failed to move beyond procedural discussions about how to phase out fossil fuels worldwide, in accordance with an agreement made at the climate talks in Dubai nearly two years ago. 

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We have a lot more to do before we meet again in Belém,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body which oversees UN climate talks. “There is so much more work to do to keep 1.5 alive, as science demands,” he added, referring to the landmark goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, itself a result of COP negotiations, to keep planetary warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit compared to preindustrial levels.

As at past climate summits, the key conflicts in Bonn appeared to be about money. In Baku last year, countries were locked in a protracted debate over how much funding richer, developed nations should provide to help poorer, industrializing nations move away from fossil fuels and adapt to climate change. Although researchers estimated that developing countries need trillions of dollars to do so, wealthy nations only committed to $300 billion in transfers per year by 2035. And while the decision in Baku recognized a larger need by calling on rich countries to help raise $1.3 trillion in global climate investment, it provided no specifics on how this will be accomplished. 

In order to develop a pathway to expand and clarify those financial goals, Brazilian and Azerbaijani climate diplomats began an effort to develop what they called the “Baku to Belém roadmap,” a report intended to lay out how rich nations could mobilize the $1.3 trillion in funding. At Bonn, Brazilian officials were expected to begin finding common ground with other countries to make the roadmap a reality. Instead, however, the meeting began with a contentious debate over whether a provision on climate finance from developed to developing countries should be on the agenda at all. The dispute, which suggested that tensions between developed and developing countries over who would pay for climate action and how have only grown, consumed the first two days of the conference. That left little time to discuss the roadmap.

“Countries are quite uncertain about the roadmap, how it’s going to look, and to what extent it will reflect the views of all countries,” said Sandra Guzmán Luna, who has attended every COP since 2008 and is the general director of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean, a research and advocacy initiative in the region. “There are more doubts about the roadmap than support.”

The uncertainty around finance has ripple effects on the scale of climate ambition that developing nations are willing to display. Countries are required to submit plans for lowering their greenhouse gas emissions — formally called Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs — every five years. Despite a deadline looming later this year, only two dozen or so countries have submitted updated NDCs. Guzmán Luna said that many developing countries are refusing to submit new NDCs with more ambitious climate goals because of a lack of financial support from wealthy nations. Given that rich, early-industrializing countries caused the lion’s share of global warming so far, the argument goes, it’s only fair that they should shoulder most of the burden of financing the energy transition.

“There is a clear political statement from many developing countries that if there is no money, they are not going to increase ambition,” said Guzmán Luna. “It’s a legitimate point from developing countries to say so — but obviously, it’s a huge risk for climate action.”

These disagreements don’t bode well for negotiations at COP30 in Belém, where world leaders will gather amid mounting frustration over a growing pile of unfulfilled promises from previous COPs.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This year’s UN climate talks are already behind — 5 months before COP30 kicks off in Brazil on Jun 27, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape says the Middle East conflict was one of the discussions of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Suva this week — and Pacific leaders “took note of what is happening”.

The Post-Courier reports Marape saying the “12 Day War” between Israel and Iran was based on high technology and using missiles sent from great distances.

“In the context of MSG, the leaders want peace always. And the Pacific remains friends to all, enemies to none,” he said.

• READ MORE: Fiji advocacy group slams Indonesian role in MSG as a ‘disgrace’
• New era for MSG as Fiji assumes leadership role
• Pro-independence advocates urge MSG to elevate West Papua membership
• Other West Papua reports

He said an effect on PNG would be the inflation in prices of oil and gas.

Yesterday morning, US President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire had been agreed  between Israel and Iran, and so far it has been holding in spite of tensions.

Australia had stepped in to help Papua New Guinea diplomats and citizens caught in the Middle East.

Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko confirmed last week that a group was to be evacuated through Jordan.

There had been six diplomats in lockdown at the PNG embassy in Jerusalem awaiting extraction.

Meanwhile, a repatriation flight for Australians stuck in Israel had been cancelled.

ABC News reported that it was the second day repatriation plans were scrapped at the last minute because of rocket fire. A bus meant to take people across the border into Jordan was cancelled the previous day.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on June 13, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

After days of mutual threats, Israel launched an unprecedented series of strikes on Iranian soil early on Friday, targeting Iranian nuclear sites, airports, top military leaders, and nuclear scientists in several locations, including the Iranian capital, Tehran.

At around 3:00 a.m. local time, Iranian news agencies reported several explosions in Tehran, while the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, declared that Israel had “conducted a preemptive strike against Iran.” Later, Iranian news agency Irna reported that the Israeli strikes had targeted and killed the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hussein Salami, as well as the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, the head of the revolutionary guard’s Khatem al-Anbiya military complex, and six Iranian nuclear scientists.

The attack also targeted the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in the center of the country, as well as other nuclear and military facilities in the west. Later in the morning, new Israeli strikes targeted the Tibriz Airport in the north.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, stated on Friday, following the Israeli attack, that Israel will receive a “hard punishment.” Khamenei also announced the appointment of replacements for the slain military leaders. 

Meanwhile, the Jamqaran mosque in the Islamic holy city of Qom raised the red flag, a Shiite tradition symbolizing coming vengeance. The red flag has been previously raised at Jamqaran before the Iranian response to the assassinations of Quds force general Qasem Suleimani in 2020 and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in 2024. 

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi urged the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to condemn the Israeli attack.

Israeli military sources later reported that Iran had launched around 100 attack drones toward Israel and that its air defense systems intercepted them above neighboring countries. However, the spokesperson of the Israeli army said in a press statement that Israel was expecting a larger Iranian retaliation, and that the escalation would last for several days, urging Israelis to remain indoors pending further instructions.

The lead-up: U.S.-Iran nuclear talks

The Israeli attack came after five rounds of Iranian negotiations with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program in Oman, and two days away from a sixth round scheduled for Sunday. In recent days, the rhetoric between Iran, the U.S., and Israel has escalated as U.S. President Trump repeated that his confidence in reaching a deal with Iran was diminishing. 

The crucial point of difference in the nuclear talks has been U.S. insistence that Iran should not enrich uranium on its soil for its civil nuclear purposes, which Iran considers a non-starter, insisting on maintaining its enrichment capacity.

Earlier in May, CNN announced that the U.S. had gathered intelligence about Israeli preparations for a strike against Iran, while nuclear talks between Iran and the U.S. were ongoing. This came several days after Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, announced that the U.S. “will not allow Iran to enrich uranium.” 

Last Monday, Iran announced that its intelligence services had obtained thousands of secret Israeli nuclear documents and threatened to reveal their contents.

The lead-up to the attack also saw the repatriation of several U.S. diplomats from the Middle East last Wednesday, including the U.S. embassy in Iraq. The following day, the IAEA announced that Iran was in breach of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations. 

Internally, Israel’s decision to attack Iran came in a delicate political moment, following the voting by the Israeli Knesset on a bill to dissolve itself, supported by the Israeli opposition and Orthodox Haredi parties. The motion passed in its first reading and had two more readings to go before taking effect. Had it been passed, the adopted bill would have forced early elections and put an end to the current government coalition led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Although internal pressure on Netanyahu is unprecedented, it comes at a time when the Knesset is due to go into summer recess in the coming weeks, and will be back in session only in autumn. The state of emergency created by attacking Iran will therefore delay the legal process to dissolve the Knesset, possibly saving Netanyahu’s coalition. 

Already on Friday, several Knesset members who voted in favor of the motion to dissolve the Knesset voiced their support for Netanyahu’s decision to attack Iran.

The Knesset vote came after voices have multiplied in calling for the cessation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, with some ministers within Netanyahu’s government joining the calls.

Internationally, pressure also continues to mount on Israel to end its onslaught on Gaza, especially after its interception of the Madleen aid boat in international waters last week and its ongoing detainment of several of its passengers, including French European parliament member Rima Hassan. 

Pressure also mounted last week after five European countries, including the UK, imposed sanctions on Israeli far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

What the attack on Iran means for Palestinians

In Gaza, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated even further after two weeks of food rations being distributed through the Israeli-backed and U.S.-controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial organization tasked with distributing aid to Palestinians instead of the UN. Israeli forces have committed several aid massacres against starving Gazans at the GHF’s distribution points in southern and central Gaza. The massacres have seen the killing of dozens of civilians at GHF sites on a near-daily basis, often after the Israeli army has opened fire on desperate crowds of civilians.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to end the war in Gaza by an overwhelming majority. The vote came almost ten days after the U.S. vetoed a similar resolution at the UN Security Council, sparking widespread criticism.

The international sense of alarm created by the Israeli-made humanitarian crisis in Gaza could only be topped by the new alarming situation created by the Israeli attack on Iran. The expectations of an Iranian response and the risk of an all-out regional war in the Middle East have raised global alarm among world leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, who called for “de-escalation” on Friday.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ongoing offensive on Palestinians in the West Bank, which has already been shaded by regional developments, continues to move further away from the spotlight. Immediately following its attack on Iran, Israel imposed a total closure on the West Bank, closing a number of checkpoints and restricting the circulation of Palestinians. Israel also closed the Allenby Bridge crossing to Jordan, the only way out of the country for West Bank Palestinians.

In recent weeks, Israel ramped up its offensive on the West Bank, adopting new decisions that allowed it to confiscate more Palestinian land and announcing the building of 22 new settlements. This has come amid a widening military crackdown on West Bank towns and cities, most recently when Israeli forces killed two Palestinian brothers and wounded thirty Palestinians in Nablus during a 28-hour raid last Tuesday. Meanwhile, its forces continue to occupy the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps, demolishing more homes in the camps and preventing the return of its over 40,000 expelled residents.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Qassam Muaddi.

For those who were pregnant at the time, enduring these extreme conditions wasn’t just uncomfortable — it may have left a lasting imprint on their children’s brains. That’s according to a new study published on Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One. Using MRI scans, researchers at Queens College, City University of New York, found that children whose mothers lived through Superstorm Sandy had distinct brain differences that could hinder their emotional development. The effects were even more dramatic when people were exposed to extreme heat during their pregnancy, in addition to the tropical storm, the researchers found. 

“It’s not just one climate stressor or one isolated event, but rather a combination of everything,” said Donato DeIngeniis, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student in neuropsychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. DeIngeniis’ study is the first of its kind to examine the joint effects of natural disasters and extreme heat — events that often coincide. A few years ago, scientists dubbed summer “danger season” since it’s a time of colliding risks, including heat, hurricanes, wildfires, and toxic smoke. And summertime temperatures keep climbing to new heights. 

The study analyzed brain imaging data from a group of 34 children, approximately 8 years old, whose mothers were pregnant during Superstorm Sandy — some of whom were pregnant at the time that Sandy made landfall, and some of whom were exposed to heat 95 degrees F or higher during their pregnancy. While the researchers didn’t find that heat alone had much of an impact, living through Superstorm Sandy led to an increase in the basal ganglia’s volume, a part of the brain that deals with regulating emotions. 

While that larger size could be a compensation in response to stress, changes in the basal ganglia have been linked to behavioral challenges for children, such as depression and autism, DeIngeniis said.

“What we are seeing is compelling evidence that the climate crisis is not just an environmental emergency, it is potentially a neurological one with consequence for future generations who will inherit our planet,” said Duke Shereen, a co-author of the study and the director of the MRI facility at CUNY Graduate Center, in a press release. Global warming made Superstorm Sandy more damaging as a result of rising sea levels and higher ocean temperatures that might have amped up its rainfall.

Yoko Nomura, a co-author of the study and a psychology professor at the Queens College, CUNY, said that the time before birth is “very, very sensitive” for development because the fetus’ body is changing so drastically. The human brain grows the most rapidly in the womb, reaching more than a third of its full adult volume before birth, according to the study. Any added stress at that time, even if small, “can have a much bigger impact,” Nomura said.

But that extra-sensitive period also presents a window of opportunity. “Developmental science, including the science in this paper, is exciting because it not only tells us what we can do to protect children from the effects of climate change, but it also tells us when we can step in to protect children to make the greatest difference,” Lindsey Burghardt, chief science officer at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, said in an email.

Although there’s a lot of evidence that prenatal stress generally can affect child brain development, according to DeIngeniis, research on climate-related stress specifically is lacking. “It is still a field that has potential for explosive growth,” said Jennifer Barkin, a professor at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia, who is studying the effects of last year’s Hurricane Helene on maternal health.

DeIngeniis’ study offers concrete evidence of how climate-charged events can affect the brain, Barkin said. “People have a hard time sometimes with mental health, because it’s not like you can take an X-ray and see a broken bone.” But it’s easier to understand imaging showing a difference in brain volume based on exposure to environmental stress, she said. 

Barkin, who developed an index for measuring maternal health after childbirth, says that people are beginning to pay more attention to mothers and their mental health — not just in terms of delivering a healthy baby, but over the long term. “We tend to focus things on the child’s outcome, which is important, but to keep the child healthy, the mother has to be healthy, too,” she said. “Because when Mom’s struggling, the family’s going to struggle.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate disasters can alter kids’ brains — before they’re even born on Jun 11, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

I’ve had a YouTube channel for about 10 years where I don’t have a ton of followers, and I don’t want to have a ton of followers. I’m very honest. Usually I’m crying. I would so much rather have a really small community of people who are willing to listen to me than have a large community of people who just want to walk by.

So many times I’m on shows with comedians who have a big following and I see their set and it’s not a cohesive set. It’s a compilation of everything that they’ve posted online. If I was an audience member and I paid money to be there, I’m not seeing a private piece of work. I don’t feel like I’m in on a secret.

For me, there’s no joke on the internet right now on my Instagram that I also perform on stage. If you want to see that and you want to experience the wonder of that, come to a show, come experience live art. It’s really disappointing to me to see so many comedians with a big following… They get this Disney FastPass into bigger shows, into opening for bigger comedians, and I’d say 75% of the time it’s well deserved. It’s well deserved, they’ve put in the work, they’re great comedians, and other times they’re just on the internet using trigger words, but they’re not an experienced comedian with a well-crafted set.

When it comes to posting things online, if I can be as vulnerable and as genuine as possible, I am going to attract those people. I don’t want to attract people who don’t have those same values. If I want to attract people that are also going to be honest and vulnerable with me, it is my responsibility to be honest and vulnerable. I also feel like I am somebody who is very willing to share nitty-gritty stuff on the internet.

Recently I spoke to an old friend who said she’s not interested in getting bigger; she’s interested in refining what she does. She was calling it “horizontal growth.” Staying where you are, but finding a way to flourish in that space. Or, there’s this TCI interview with Justin Vernon, where he says, basically, “The goal is not always constant maximization, you don’t always need to scale up.” Essentially, “Not everybody needs to be Walmart.”

We live in a time where folks are also often told they need to focus on one endeavor, if they plan to grow it. Always this need to grow… I think it’s interesting that, as a comedian, you have an Instagram and website for your visual art, too.

I have a poster in my room that I’ve made that says, “Never niche down.” The internet wants you to niche down, but your brain and your body and your soul don’t want you to. Something that I’ve noticed, you watch these big comedians on Netflix, after a few specials, their whole set becomes about them being a comedian. They start chasing their own tail. It’s so important to me that, no matter how big I get with comedy, I’m always pursuing something else. That way I have something to talk about. I have other experiences to talk about.

How much time do you spend working on your comedy versus working on your art?

It’s always shifting. I’m always trying to follow my joy. I’m never trying to push through creative burnout. This last week I’ve been preparing for an art festival and all my brain is focusing is on that, and so I haven’t been going to open mics, but then there could be a week where I’m feeling a little burnt out on art, and so then I’ll shift all my energy towards comedy. I am not a writer. I do not write any of my jokes. They are all figured out on stage via just talking, and I record them, and then I figure out what I liked, what the audience responded to, and I basically just, over time, memorize that.

I don’t write jokes. The only thing that I write are my raps. Obviously, I sit down and I produce the music for that, and that’s a whole thing. But all my jokes and all my stories and all my silly skits and stuff, I do all that on stage. Every time you see a joke from me—and my parents can attest to this—there’s a couple bits that I do that I’ve been doing for a few years, and every single time I do it, it’s different, because it’s not written down.

In terms of managing my time, I try not to put boundaries on it. I try not to put like, okay, 9:00 to 5:00 I work on art, and then 5:00 to 10:00, I work on comedy, because creativity can’t follow a time schedule. An insurance office can, an accountant can, but my brain is a lava lamp. I try to just follow where I’m at in the moment and trust that that’s where the best work will come from.

The writer Eileen Myles said this thing to me once: creativity can strike at any time; you just have to be receptive to it when it hits. You said you don’t deal with the creative block—I’ve always found that useful, too. Essentially, you pivot. If you’re blocked somewhere, you pivot to one of your other outlets.

I’m always pivoting and I’m always doing what sounds good and what sounds exciting in the moment, and trusting that, with the other thing that doesn’t sound exciting, it’ll come back. But if I’m not feeling interested in painting, then why would I force myself to paint? If I’ve got a really good idea for a dance routine, then I’m going to focus on that. That’s where your best work is going to come from. Something I’m always reminding myself, I’ve been a creative person since I was born ,and that is not going to change. The outlet will change. It would be weird if the outlet didn’t change, at least for me.

Some people, they are born a natural, they draw and they draw forever, but clearly that is not what’s happening in my life. I do a gajillion different things, and so I’m always telling myself to just love what you love right now and love it as hard as possible because there will come a day when you’ll love something else more. Don’t try to constrain your love for something right now. Right now, I’m really into comedy and I’m really into painting my furniture and painting big paintings, but two years ago, I was really into photography. As long as you’re doing what you love at every second, the bricks will lay themselves on the path. If you try to force a path or, “No, I’m a comedian, I have to do comedy,” then you’re making a shitty path. Follow what sounds good right now. I’m very aware that comedy is a really good performing outlet for me right now, but the second it’s not fun, I’ll move on. I’m not tied to it.

What do you consider a successful set versus one where maybe you think, “Oh, that didn’t work”? Or, maybe it just wasn’t what you hoped it would be…

That’s a great question. An unsuccessful set for me is a set where maybe mentally I’m not super present or the audience is really distracting. I have a really hard time with doing shows at venues where people are eating and everyone’s having conversations and I want to try to figure out what people are saying. Any show where I’ve got to rely on jokes that I’ve been doing for years and I’ve got to just let a script come out of my mouth, those are the worst sets.

Sets where I can be super present on stage, and I’m riffing a lot, I feel really silly, I have a lot of energy, or a set where I don’t get through all my material, that is the best set, because that means that I was crafting in the moment, and that’s where I think I’m the funniest.

I’m not a huge fan of standup comedy. It’s rare for me to see a standup routine from somebody and I’m pissing my pants laughing, because it feels like comedians are trying to trick you. They’re like, “Ha. I set you up and now you’re laughing.” But something I’m always trying to remember is the funniest person you know is not a standup comedian. The funniest person you know is your cousin or your friend or your coworker that makes you crouch over laughing at work or at a dinner or whatever. I’m always trying to recreate that feeling. That’s how I want people to laugh.

Usually, people come up to me after a show and they’re like, “I was in tears laughing,” and I’m like, “Perfect.” But in order to do that, you have to be really present. You have to create a connection with the audience where they feel like they’re friends with you, so they have permission to laugh at you [as though] you guys are friends and you’re in it together, and not on stage like, “Hi, I’m a comedian. I’m better than you, and here’s a setup for this punchline, and here’s a really smart punchline.” I don’t like this dynamic where I am bigger or better. I am just a girl. We’re there to laugh together, I’m just doing most of the talking.

You were saying before, you don’t necessarily push through creative blocks, but have you ever had points where you reached a dry period where you just don’t do comedy or don’t make art?

I definitely go through that. And those times can be hard because making things is so…that’s who I am. I grew up with parents who were architects. My parents are very creative people. My sibling is a musician in New York. It was very confusing to me to go over to my friend’s houses, and I’d be like, “What are you working on?” And they’d be like, “What do you mean? I’m watching Disney Channel.” I’m like, “No, but what project are you working on?” It was weird for me that other people weren’t always creating.

I always had a project going on. At one point, I was really into sewing backpacks. Another point, I was really into drawing ice cream cones, and I grew up a violinist. Now, when I’m at a point where there’s careers involved, it can get a little tricky when I need to take a break. The last few weeks, I’ve been so committed to comedy stuff and some of this art stuff that when, at the end of the day, it’s time for me to take a break, I’m like, well, “This is usually when I would go make something.”

It’s like, what do I do? I can’t go for another walk. What do people do? And my boyfriend was like, “Well, people usually watch TV or go to a friend’s house or something,” and I’m like, “But I need to be making something.”

I’m trying to figure out how to battle those spells. Even if I’m on the couch and depressed and I don’t know what to do, naturally, 30 minutes later, I’ve got a crayon in my hands. It’s just there’s an innate need to create, whether it’s as big as a film or it’s little as writing “hello” a whole bunch of times on a piece of paper.

Do you have a goal of where you’d want to be with your creative work in a few years, or are you just taking it as it comes and seeing what happens?

I am taking it as it comes. Sometimes I have to look at myself in the mirror and go, “Jasmine, you’re 23 years old, chill. Chill.” I don’t think it’s crazy for me to say that I know myself pretty well, there is so much for me to discover, and again, as long as I’m doing what I love, the right path will make itself. People always say to me, they’re like, with comedy, “I’ll see you on Netflix.” I’m like, “Well, but if that’s not what’s meant to happen, then I don’t want to do that.” I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t maybe a little bit want to be on SNL, I think I would crush it on SNL, but that’s the only thing I maybe daydream about.

Other things with comedy, I’d love to have a bigger, more curated show that combines a bit more mediums to it. I’d love to tour around and do theater shows with more visual elements, maybe more projections. I’d love for it to be more of a proper theater show, and I do think that’s possible. I think, if I put the pedal to the metal, I could do that in the next six months.

It really saddens me when I hear people be like, “I want to do this thing, but I got to wait until I have more more money. I need better equipment. I need this. I need that.” Bullshit. If you’re excited about a big thing now, do it now. Do it scared. It will never be the right time, so why not now? It will never be the right time. Creative excitement has a time limit. And if you miss that window, it’s over, babe. You’ve moved on to the next idea. Take advantage of your excitement for something right now and do it however you can, and that way you’ll be way more ready for the next thing.

I sell a print that says that, “It will never be the right time, so why not now?” My passion for it is huge. Or when people say, “Oh, I want to tour for comedy, but I need a gajillion followers. Oh, I need a bigger following. I need a manager.” No. I was like, “I’m going on tour in Phoenix and Austin and I’m going to message as many people as I can, and I’m going to show up professionally, and I can tell people I’m a professional comedian and I’m just going to do it now, because this is what I want to do now.” Take yourself seriously.

There was this interview we had on TCI with Henry Rollins a long time ago, and he basically said, “You don’t want to be the person who’s like, ‘I never got to hike that mountain I wanted to hike,’ or, “I never got to write the novel,” because it wasn’t the right time.. the fact is, it’s never the right time.” I’ve never regretted starting a project. It might not be the perfect thing, but you got to just get off the couch and do the thing, or it’ll pass by and then you’ll have a life of things that pass by that you never actually did.

If you don’t do those bigger projects, then you might not discover the next thing.

When I was a senior in college, I made a feature length film about my experience with loneliness after COVID. I shot the whole thing myself, and it’s been recognized by the National Alliance on Mental Illness as a resource for teens dealing with depression. My professors were really hesitant about me making it. They were like, “Jasmine, this is a big project. You have nine weeks. Are you sure you can do this? Do you have the right equipment?” And I was like, “I don’t have the right equipment, but I’ve got a fucking dream. And I know that, in a year, I might not really be into this and I’m going to regret not making this project.”

That film needed to be made and I needed to make it.vIt wasn’t like, “Oh, well, I can’t make a film because I don’t have a crew,” or, “I don’t have the right camera,” or, “I don’t have the right lens.” You know what I mean? The art will speak for itself.

I produced all the music for it. I wrote the songs for it. I produced music for it. It’s like, “But I don’t have a recording studio,” “I don’t have this, I don’t have that.” Okay, but you have your brain and you have a dream, use what’s around you. It’s something that I’m deeply passionate about.

Because I made my film, I really fell in love with composition and photography. After I made that film, my graduation present to myself was I finally bought a better camera. Because I did that big project, I found something else. Because I made my YouTube channel when I was 10 years old, that’s how I found I loved making thumbnails, and I was like, “I want to be a graphic designer.” And because I did dance in high school, and I was dance captain in high school, that’s where I determined that I was funny and that that’s how I got the attention of people, and then I discovered comedy. It’s like, that’s how growth happens.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Brandon Stosuy.

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil testified at his asylum hearing on Thursday, telling an immigration judge in Jena, Louisiana, that his deportation from the United States could lead to his “assassination, kidnapping, torture.” Hours before the hearing, Khalil was allowed to meet and hold his 1-month-old son Deen for the first time. The emotional moment came after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Khalil behind a plexiglass barrier for a visit with his wife and infant son.

Khalil’s legal team has raised concerns about the impartiality of immigration judges overseeing the case. “They serve at the pleasure of the president, and this is a president who has not been shy about firing immigration judges,” says Ramzi Kassem, part of the legal team representing Mahmoud Khalil.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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The week before President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that sent the stock market plummeting, a key official in the agency that shapes his administration’s trade policy sold off as much as $30,000 of stock.

Two days before that so-called “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, a State Department official sold as much as $50,000 in stock, then bought a similar investment as prices fell.

And just before Trump made another significant tariff announcement, a White House lawyer sold shares in nine companies, records show.

More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.

All of the trades came shortly before a significant government announcement or development that could influence stock prices. Some who sold individual stocks or broader market funds used their earnings to buy investments that are generally less risky, such as bonds or treasuries. Others appear to have kept their money in cash. In one case unrelated to tariffs, records show that a congressional aide bought stock in two mining companies shortly before a key Senate committee approved a bill written by his boss that would help the firms.

Using nonpublic information learned at work to trade securities could violate the law. But even if such actions aren’t influenced by insider knowledge, ethics experts warn that trading stock while the federal government’s actions move markets can create the appearance of impropriety. The recent trades by government officials, they said, underscore that there should be tighter rules on how, or if, federal employees can trade securities.

“The executive branch is routinely engaged in activities that will move the market,” said Tyler Gellasch, who, as a congressional aide, helped write the law on insider trading by government officials and now runs a nonprofit focused on transparency and ethics in capital markets. “I don’t think members of Congress and executive branch officials should be trading securities. To the extent they have investment holdings, it should be managed by someone else outside their purview. The temptation to put their own personal self-interest ahead of their duties to the country is just too high.”

There is no evidence that the trades by government officials identified by ProPublica were informed by nonpublic information. Still, when government officials trade stock at opportune times, Gellasch said, even if it was based on luck and not inside information, it undermines trust in government and the markets

“It then becomes a thing where our markets look rigged,” he said.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the officials who made the trades either said they had no insider information that would help them time their decisions or did not respond to questions about the transactions.

Questions about trades based on nonpublic information have swirled around Congress for years and began anew after Trump’s tariffs announcements led to wild swings in the market. Lawmakers’ trades are automatically posted online and, after multiple congressional stock-trading scandals, are widely scrutinized as soon as they become public.

But less attention is paid to the trades of executive branch employees and congressional aides whose work could give them access to confidential information likely to influence markets once made public.

Last week, ProPublica reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media, the president’s social media company, on April 2. After the market closed that day, Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs, sending the market reeling. Bondi’s ethics agreement required her to sell by early May, but why she sold on that date is unclear. She has yet to answer questions about the trades, and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this week, ProPublica reported that Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary, sold shares in almost three dozen companies on Feb. 11, two days before Trump announced plans to institute wide-ranging “reciprocal” tariffs. A Transportation Department spokesperson said Duffy’s account manager made the trades and that Duffy had no input on the timing.

Using insider government information to buy or sell securities could violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act. But no cases have ever been brought under the law, and some legal experts have doubts it would hold up to scrutiny from the courts, which in recent years have generally narrowed what constitutes illegal insider trading.

Thousands of government employees are required to file disclosure forms if they sell or buy securities worth more than $1,000. In many cases, the records are available only in person in Washington, D.C., or through a records request. The documents do not include exact amounts bought or sold but instead provide a broad range for the totals of each transaction.

ProPublica examined hundreds of records for trades shortly before major tariff announcements or other key government decisions. Trump, of course, repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he intended to institute dramatic tariffs on foreign imports. But during the first weeks of his term, investors were not panic selling, seeming to assume that his campaign promises were bluster. Several tariff announcements by Trump early on shook the markets, but it wasn’t until he detailed his new tariffs on April 2 that stocks dived.

Among those who sold securities before one of Trump’s main tariff announcements was Tobias Dorsey. Dorsey, a lawyer in the executive branch since the Obama administration, was named acting general counsel for the White House’s Office of Administration in January, when Trump was inaugurated. The division provides a range of services, including research and legal counseling across the president’s staff, including the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which helps craft trade policy. In his LinkedIn bio, Dorsey describes his duties since 2022 as giving “expert advice on a wide range of legal and policy matters to help White House officials achieve their policy goals.”

On Feb. 25 and 26, disclosure records show, Dorsey unloaded shares of an index fund and nine companies, including cleaning products manufacturer Clorox and engineering firm Emerson Electric. The total dollar figure for the sales was between $12,000 and $180,000. (He purchased one stock, defense contractor Palantir, which was selling for a bargain after recently plummeting on news of Pentagon budget cuts.)

At the time of Dorsey’s trades, investors were still largely in denial that Trump was going to go through with the massive tariffs he had promised during the campaign. But the next morning, Trump posted on social media that significant tariffs on Mexico and Canada “will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled” in several days, and that “China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date.”

The S&P 500, a stock index that tracks a wide swath of the market, fell almost 2% that day alone and ultimately dropped nearly 18% in six weeks.

In an interview, Dorsey said the sale was made by his wife from an account belonging to her. He said she decided to sell around $20,000 worth of shares so they could make tuition payments and that he had no nonpublic information on the impending tariff announcements. The kind of work he does as a career employee, he said, focuses not on public policy, but on how the White House operates, including personnel, workplace technology, contracts and records issues.

“I’m not advising Stephen Miller or Peter Navarro,” he said, referring to top policy advisers to the president. “I’m advising the people running the campus. … I don’t have access to any sensitive political information.”

Another well-timed set of transactions was made by Marshall Stallings, the director of intergovernmental affairs and public engagement for Trump’s Trade Representative. The office helps shape the White House’s trade policy and negotiates trade deals with foreign governments.

On March 25 and 27, Stallings sold between $2,000 and $30,000 of stock in retail giant Target and mining company Freeport-McMoRan. The sales appear to have been an abrupt U-turn. He had purchased the shares less than a week earlier. Days after Stallings’ sales, Trump unveiled his most dramatic tariffs. Target stock fell 17%. Freeport-McMoRan fell 25%.

Stallings and the Trade Representative’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A longtime State Department official, Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath, who until April was ambassador to Peru, also appeared to make a bet against the stock market. On March 24 and 25, she sold between $255,000 and $650,000 in stocks, and bought between $265,000 and $650,000 in bond and treasury funds (along with $50,000 to $100,000 in stocks). Then, on March 31, two days before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement, she sold between $15,000 and $50,000 of a broad-based stock fund. When the market started to plummet, she bought back the same dollar range in another stock fund. Syptak-Ramnath said she did not have any information about the administration's decisions beyond what was publicly available. The trades, she said, were “undertaken as a result of family obligations” and in “response to a changing economy.”

A second longtime State Department official, Gautam Rana, who is now ambassador to Slovakia, sold between $830,000 and $1.7 million worth of stock on March 19, a week before Trump declared new tariffs on cars and two weeks before his “Liberation Day” announcement. The shares he sold were largely broad-based index funds. Rana declined to comment for this story.

Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer, said executive branch employees who don’t have nonpublic information and want to trade stock should consult with ethics officials before doing so, thereby allowing an independent third party to assess their actions.

“If you trade and you don’t seek advice in advance, you kind of do it at your own risk, and if you’re asked about it, you have to hope there aren’t factors that make someone question your motivations,” Canter said. “If you seek ethics official advice, you have some cover.”

Executive branch employees are barred from taking government actions that would narrowly benefit them personally, and some are required to sell stock in companies and industries they have purview over in their jobs. But like members of Congress, they are allowed to trade securities.

Since Trump’s tariff announcements and walkbacks began causing fluctuations in the market, questions have been raised about whether anyone has profited off advance notice of the moves. After Trump unexpectedly rolled back some of his tariffs in early April, causing stocks to surge, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned on social media that “any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bought between $21,000 and $315,000 of stock the day before and the day of the announcement. The Georgia Republican has not said what motivated the trades but in the past said a financial adviser manages her investments without her input.

ProPublica’s review of disclosures also found trades by congressional aides that took place before the market tumbled.

Michael Platt, a veteran Republican staffer who served in the Commerce Department during Trump’s first term and now works for the House committee that handles administrative matters for the chamber, restructured his portfolio in March. An account under his wife’s name sold off between $96,000 and $390,000 in mostly American companies, and purchased at least $45,000 in foreign stocks and at least $15,000 in an American and Canadian energy index fund. Some stock forecasters considered international markets a relatively safe haven if Trump went through with his tariffs. Platt did not respond to requests for comment.

Stephanie Trifone, a Senate Judiciary Committee aide, sold stock in mid-March and bought at least $50,000 in treasuries. A spokesperson for the committee’s Democratic minority said Trifone had no nonpublic information about the tariffs and her trades were conducted by a financial adviser without her input. Kevin Wheeler, a staffer for the Senate Appropriations Committee, made a similar move. In late February, he and his spouse offloaded between $18,000 and $270,000 in funds composed almost entirely of stocks and bought between $50,000 and $225,000 in bonds. A spokesperson for the Appropriation Committee’s Republican majority said Wheeler had no nonpublic information about Trump’s tariff plans and that a financial planner made the trades after advising Wheeler to take a more conservative approach with his portfolio.

Another staffer, Ryan White, chief of staff to Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, bought shares worth between $2,000 and $30,000 in two precious metals mining companies two days before Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement. He continued buying more shares in the companies, Hecla Mining and Coeur Mining, in the following days.

Precious metals can be a safe haven during a bear market turn, but those stocks, like the rest of the market, declined after Trump’s tariff announcements.

Two days after White’s last purchase in April of the mining companies’ shares, however, the firms got some good news. A bill White’s boss introduced to make it easier for mining companies like Hecla and Coeur to operate on public lands was approved by a Senate committee, an important step in passing a bill. (White added to his Hecla shares earlier this month and sold his stake in Coeur.)

White told ProPublica that “all required reporting and ethics rules were followed.” Any suggestion that the committee passing the bill played a role in his stock purchases “is a stretch and patently false,” he said, adding that the legislation “has not become law and even if it does, would take decades to have any appreciable impact.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Robert Faturechi, Pratheek Rebala and Brandon Roberts.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Two days before President Donald Trump announced dramatic plans for “reciprocal” tariffs on foreign imports, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold stock in almost three dozen companies, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.

The Feb. 11 sales occurred near the stock market’s historic peak, just before it began to slide amid concerns about Trump’s tariff plans and ultimately plummeted after the president unveiled the details of the new tariffs on April 2.

Disclosure records filed by Duffy with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics show he sold between $75,000 and $600,000 of stock two days before Trump’s Feb. 13 announcement, and up to $50,000 more that day.

Transportation secretaries normally have little to do with tariff policy, but Duffy has presented himself as one of the intellectual forefathers of Trump’s current trade agenda. As a congressman in 2019, his last government position before Trump elevated him to his cabinet post, Duffy introduced a bill he named the “United States Reciprocal Trade Act.” The proposed legislation, which did not pass, in many ways mirrors Trump’s reciprocal tariff plan. Duffy worked on that bill with Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro. Trump’s tariffs were “the culmination of that work,” Duffy posted online, referring to his own bill in the House.

Trades by government officials informed by nonpublic information learned in the course of their official duties could violate the law. However, it’s unclear whether Duffy had any information about the timing or scale of Trump’s reciprocal tariff plans before the public did.

Trump had repeatedly promised to institute significant tariffs throughout the campaign. But during the first weeks of his term, investors were not panic selling, seeming to assume Trump wouldn’t adopt the far-reaching levies that led to the market crash following his “Liberation Day” announcement.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a Transportation Department spokesperson said an outside manager made the trades and Duffy “had no input on the timing of the sales” — a defense that ethics experts generally consider one of the strongest against questions of trading on nonpublic information.

His stock transactions “are part of a retirement account and not managed directly by the Secretary. The account managers must follow the guidance of the ethics agreement and they have done so.”

“The Secretary strongly supports the President’s tariff policy, but he isn’t part of the administration’s decisions on tariff levels,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson dismissed the notion that knowledge of Trump’s coming tariffs could constitute insider knowledge because “President Trump has been discussing tariffs since the 1980s.”

Duffy is the second cabinet secretary to have sold stock at an opportune time.

Last week, ProPublica reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media, the president’s social media company, on April 2. A government ethics agreement required Bondi to sell the shares within 90 days of her confirmation, a deadline that would have given her until early May, but why she sold on that date is unclear. After the market closed that day, Trump presented his tariffs, sending the market reeling.

Following ProPublica’s story, at least two Democratic members of Congress called for investigations. Bondi has yet to answer questions about whether she knew anything about Trump’s tariff plans before the public did. The Justice Department has not responded to questions about the trades.

Disclosure forms for securities trading by government officials do not require them to state the exact amount bought or sold but instead to provide a broad range for the totals of each transaction.

Duffy's disclosure records show he sold 34 stocks worth between $90,000 and $650,000 on Feb. 11 and Feb. 13. Per the ethics agreement he signed to avoid conflicts of interest as head of the Transportation Department, he was required to sell off stock in seven of those companies during his first three months in office. Cabinet members are typically required to divest themselves of financial interests that intersect with their department’s oversight role, which in Duffy’s case involve U.S. roadways, aviation and the rest of the nation’s transportation network. The ethics agreement was dated Jan. 13, and Duffy was confirmed by the senate on Jan. 28, meaning he had until late April to sell. His spokesperson said he provided his account manager with the ethics agreement on Feb. 7.

The stocks he sold in the other 27 companies were not subject to the ethics agreement. Those shares were valued somewhere between $27,000 and $405,000, according to the records. Among them were Shopify, whose merchants are impacted by the tariffs, and John Deere, the agricultural machinery manufacturer that has projected hundreds of millions of dollars in new costs because of Trump’s tariffs.

Other companies Duffy sold, like gambling firm DraftKings and food delivery service DoorDash, are less directly vulnerable to tariff disruptions. But even those companies will be impacted if Americans have less disposable cash to spend. Few stocks were not hit hard by Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. The S&P 500, a broadbased index, fell almost 19% in the weeks that followed Duffy’s sales and 13% specifically after Trump unveiled the details of his reciprocal tariff plan. Since Trump unexpectedly walked back much of those initial tariffs, the market has rebounded.

There’s no indication that the cash from Duffy’s sales was immediately reinvested. He appears to have held on to parts of his portfolio, including a Bitcoin fund, treasuries, S&P 500 funds and stock in Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, an American biopharma company. (Duffy also purchased some Microsoft shares, one of the stocks he’s prohibited from holding, days earlier on Feb. 7, only to sell them on Feb. 11 with the rest of his sales.)

Trades by government officials informed by nonpublic information learned through their jobs could violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act. The 2012 law clarified that executive and legislative branch employees cannot use nonpublic government information to trade stock and requires them to promptly disclose their trades.

But no cases have ever been brought under the law, and some legal experts have doubts it would hold up to scrutiny from the courts, which in recent years have generally narrowed what constitutes illegal insider trading. Current and former officials have also raised concerns that Trump’s Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission would not aggressively investigate activities by Trump or his allies.

The president’s selection of Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation was somewhat unexpected. Duffy, who came to fame when he starred in the reality show “The Real World” in the late 1990s, had last held public office in 2019 during Trump’s first term when he served as a Wisconsin congressman.

As a lawmaker, Duffy introduced the bill that would have made it easier for Trump, or any president, to levy new tariffs, a role that had long been largely reserved for Congress. The bill would have allowed the president to impose additional tariffs on imported goods if he determined that another country was applying a higher duty rate on the same goods when they were coming from America.

The bill did not pass, but Trump has essentially assumed that power by justifying new tariffs as essential to national security or in response to a national emergency. His Feb. 13 announcement called on his advisers to come up with new tariff rates on goods coming from countries around the world based on a number of restrictions he said those countries were placing on American products — not just through tariffs, but also with their exchange rates and industry subsidies.

Even the public rollout of Duffy’s bill and Trump’s tariffs were similar. Duffy released a spreadsheet showing how other countries tariffed particular goods at a higher rate than the U.S. Trump also used a spreadsheet during his rollout to show that his new tariffs were the same or lower than the trade restrictions other countries had placed on American goods.

More recently, Duffy has been a booster of Trump’s trade policies.

“LIBERATION DAY!!We’re not gonna take it anymore!,” he tweeted two days after Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs on April 2. “This week, @POTUS took a historic step towards stopping other countries from ripping off the American worker and restoring Fair Trade. In Congress, I helped lead the US Reciprocal Trade Act with @RealPNavarro and the @WhiteHouse to expand the President’s tariff powers in his first term. I am so proud to have been able to share the culmination of that work, Liberation Day, with my family this week. Thank you at POTUS!”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Robert Faturechi and Brandon Roberts.

There are calls for greater transparency about what the HMNZS Manawanui was doing before it sank in Samoa last October — including whether the New Zealand warship was performing specific security for King Charles and Queen Camilla.

The Manawanui grounded on the reef off the south coast of Upolu in bad weather on 5 October 2024 before catching fire and sinking. Its 75 crew and passengers were safely rescued.

The Court of Inquiry’s final report released on 4 April 2025 found human error and a long list of “deficiencies” grounded the $100 million vessel on the Tafitoala Reef, south of Upolu, where it caught fire and sank.

• READ MORE: Other RNZ Navy reports

Equipment including weapons and ammunition continue to be removed from the vessel as its future hangs in the balance.

The Court of Inquiry’s report explains the Royal New Zealand Navy was asked by “CHOGM Command” to conduct “a hydrographic survey of the area in the vicinity of Sinalei whilst en route to Samoa”.

When it grounded on the Tafitoala Reef, the ship was following orders received from Headquarters Joint Forces New Zealand. The report incorrectly calls it the “Sinalei Reef”.

Sinalei is the name of the resort which hosted King Charles and Queen Camilla for CHOGM — the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting — which began in Samoa 19 days after the Manawanui sank from 25-26 October 2024. The Royals arrived two days before CHOGM began.

Support of CHOGM
Speaking at the release of the court’s final report, Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding described the Manawanui’s activity on the south coast of Upolu.

“So the operation was done in support of CHOGM — a very high-profile security activity on behalf of a nation, so it wasn’t just a peacetime operation,” he said.

“It was done in what we call rapid environmental assessment so we were going in and undertaking something that we had to do a quick turnaround of that information so it wasn’t a deliberate high grade survey. It was a rapid environmental assessment so it does come with additional complexity and it did have an operational outcome. It’s just, um you know, we we are operating in complex environments.

“It doesn’t say that we did everything right and that’s what the report indicates and we just need to get after fixing those mistakes and improving.”

The report explained the Manawanui was tasked with “conducting the Sinalei survey task” “to survey a defined area of uncharted waters.” But Pacific security fellow at Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University Iati Iati questions what is meant by “in support of the upcoming CHOGM”.

“All we’ve been told in the report is that it was to support CHOGM. What that means is unclear. I think that needs to be explained. I think it also needs to be explained to the Samoan people, who initiated this.

“Whether it was just a New Zealand initiative. Whether it was done for CHOGM by the CHOGM committee or whether it was something that involved the Samoa government,” Iati said.

What-for questions
“So a lot of the, you know, who was behind this and the what-for questions haven’t been answered.”

Iati said CHOGM’s organising committee included representatives from Samoa as well as New Zealand.

“But who exactly initiated that additional task which I think is on paragraph 37 of the report after the ship had sailed, the extra task was then confirmed. Who initiated that I’m not sure and I think that needs to be explained. Why it was confirmed after the sailing that also needs to be explained.

“In terms of security, I guess the closest we can come to is the fact that you know King Charles was staying on that side and Sinalei Reef. It may have something to do with that but this is just really unclear at the moment and I think all those questions need to be addressed.”

The wreck of the Manawanui lies 2.1 nautical miles — 3.89km — from the white sandy beach of the presidential suite at Sinalei Resort where King Charles and Queen Camilla stayed during CHOGM.

Just over the fence from the Royals’ island residence, Royal New Zealand Navy divers were coming and going from the sunken vessel in the early days of their recovery operation, and now salvors and the navy continue to work from there.

AUT Law School professor Paul Myburgh said the nature of the work the Manawanui was carrying out when it ran aground on the reef has implications for determining compensation for people impacted by its sinking.

Sovereign immunity
“Historically, if it was a naval vessel that was the end of the story. You could never be sued in normal courts about anything that happened on board a naval vessel. But nowadays, of course, governmental vessels are often involved in commercial activity as well,” he said.

“So we now have what we call the restrictive theory of sovereign immunity which states that if you are involved in commercial or ordinary activity that is non-governmental you are subject to the jurisdiction of the courts, so this is why I’ve been wanting to get to the bottom of exactly what they were doing.

“Who instructed whom and that sort of thing. And it seems to me that in line with the findings of the report all of this seems to have been done on a very adhoc basis.”

RNZ first asked the New Zealand Defence Force detailed questions on Friday, April 11, but it declined to respond.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The family of Guatemalan immigrants only spoke Spanish, so they didn’t understand the tornado alert that appeared on their cell phones in English. “I was not looking at [an information source] that told me it was going to get ugly,” Rosa, identified only by her first name, told researchers for a study on how immigrant communities responded to the warnings. 

Another alert popped up in Spanish, and Rosa and her family rushed downstairs to shelter. Ten minutes later, a tornado destroyed the second floor where they’d been. 

For at least 30 years, the National Weather Service had been providing time- and labor-intensive manual translations into Spanish. Researchers have found that even delayed translations have contributed to missed evacuations, injuries, and preventable deaths. These kinds of tragedies prompted efforts to improve the speed and scope of translating weather alerts at local, state, and national levels.

Early into the Biden administration, the agency began a series of experimental pilot projects to improve language translations of extreme weather alerts across the country. The AI translating company Lilt was behind one of them. By the end of 2023, the agency had rolled out a product using Lilt’s artificial intelligence software to automate translations of weather forecasts and warnings in Spanish and Chinese.

“By providing weather forecasts and warnings in multiple languages, NWS will improve community and individual readiness and resilience as climate change drives more extreme weather events,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said in a press release announcing the 2023 launch. Since then, the service also added automatic translations into Vietnamese, French, and Samoan. The machine learning system could translate alerts in just two to three minutes — what might take a human translator an hour — said Joseph Trujillo Falcón, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose work supported the program. 

And now those alerts are gone. The National Weather Service has indefinitely suspended its automated language translations because its contract with Lilt has lapsed, according to an April 1 administrative message issued by the agency. The sudden change has left experts concerned for the nearly 71 million people in the U.S. who speak a language other than English at home. As climate change supercharges calamities like hurricanes, heat waves, and floods, the stakes have never been higher — or deadlier. 

“Because these translations are no longer available, communities who do not understand English are significantly less safe and less aware of the hazardous weather that might be happening in their area,” said a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee familiar with the translation project, whom Grist granted anonymity to protect them from retaliation. Hundreds of thousands of alerts were translated by the Lilt AI language model, the employee said.

An internal memo reviewed by Grist showed that the National Weather Service has stopped radio translations for offices in its southern region, where 77 million people live, and does not plan to revert to a previous method of translation — meaning that its broadcasts will no longer contain Spanish translations of forecasts and warnings. The move enraged some workers at local NWS offices, according to conversations relayed to the employee, as the decision not to restart radio translations was due to the workload burden as the service’s workforce faces cuts under the Trump administration.

No clear reason was given as to why the contract lapsed and the agency has discontinued its translations, the employee said. “Due to a contract lapse, NWS paused the automated language translation services for our products until further notice,” NOAA weather service spokesperson Michael Musher told Grist in a statement. Musher did not address whether the NWS plans to resume translations, nor did he address Grist’s additional requests for clarification. Lilt did not respond to a request for comment.

Fernando Rivera, a disaster sociologist at the University of Central Florida who has studied language-equity issues in emergency response, told Grist the move by the administration “is not surprising” as it’s in “the same trajectory in terms of [Trump] making English the official language.” Rivera also pointed to how, within hours of the president’s inauguration, the Trump administration shut down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. Trump’s mandate rescinded a decades-old order enacted by former President Bill Clinton that federal agencies and recipients of federal money must provide language aid to non-English speakers. 

“At the end of the day, there’s things that shouldn’t be politicized,” Rivera said.

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Of the millions of people living in the U.S. who don’t speak English at home, the vast majority speak Spanish, followed by Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Arabic. Now that the contract with Lilt has lapsed, it’ll be difficult to fulfill the Federal Communications Commission’s pre-Trump ruling on January 8 that wireless providers support emergency alerts in the 13 most common languages spoken in the U.S., said Trujillo Falcón, the researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

The gap will have to be filled by doing translations by hand, or by using less accurate automated translations that can lead to confusion. Google Translate, for example, has been known to use “tornado clock” for “tornado watch” and grab the word for “hairbrush” for “brush fires” when translating English warnings to Spanish. Lilt, by contrast, trained its model specifically on weather-related terminologies to improve its accuracy.

While urban areas might have news outlets like Telemundo or Univision that could help reach Spanish-speaking audiences, rural areas don’t typically have these resources, Trujillo Falcón said: “That’s often where a lot of multilingual communities go to work in factories and on farms. They won’t have access to this life-saving information whatsoever. And so that’s what truly worries me.” 

It’s an issue even in states with a large population of Spanish speakers, like California. “It’s assumed that automatic translations of emergency information is commonplace and ubiquitous throughout California, but that’s not the case, particularly in our rural, agricultural areas where we have farmworkers and a large migrant population,” said Michael Méndez, a professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. 

Méndez said that Spanish speakers have been targeted by misinformation during extreme weather. A study in November found that Latinos who use Spanish-language social media for news were more susceptible to false political narratives pertaining to natural disaster relief and other issues than those who use English-language media. The National Weather Service alerts were “an important tool for people to get the correct information, particularly now, from a trusted source that’s vetted,” Méndez said.

Amy Liebman, chief program officer at the nonprofit Migrant Clinicians Network, sees it only placing a “deeper burden” on local communities and states to fill in the gaps. In the days since the weather service contract news first broke, a smattering of local organizations across the country have already announced they will be doubling down on their work offering non-English emergency information. 

But local and state disaster systems also tend to be riddled with issues concerning language access services. A Natural Hazards Center report released last year found that in hurricane hotspots like Florida, state- and county-level emergency management resources for those with limited English proficiency are scarce and inconsistent. All told, the lack of national multilingual emergency weather alerts “will have pretty deep ripple effects,” said Liebman. “It’s a life or death impact.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Millions of Americans don’t speak English. Now they won’t be warned before weather disasters. on Apr 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

On Tuesday, April 8, unions, unionized federal workers, and their supporters around the country mobilized for a national “Kill the Cuts” day of action to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to life-saving research, healthcare, and education programs. As organizers stated on the Kill The Cuts website:

“By cutting funds to lifesaving research and medical care, the Trump administration is abandoning families who are suffering and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. These cuts are dangerous to our health, and dangerous to our economy. On Tuesday, April 8th, 2025 workers across the country are standing up and demanding NO cuts to education and life-saving research.”

In this on-the-ground edition of Working People, we take you to the front lines of the Kill the Cuts rally that took place in Washington, DC, and we speak with workers and union representatives whose lives and work have already been affected by these cuts.

Speakers include: Margaret Cook, Vice President of the Public, Healthcare, and Education Workers sector of the Communications Workers of America (CWA); Matt Brown, Recording Secretary of NIH Fellows United (United Auto Workers Local 2750); Rakshita Balaji, a post-baccalaureate researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and Amanda Dykema, shop steward for American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1072 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Additional links/info:

• Kill the Cuts website
• NIH Fellows United website
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “What’s really behind Trump’s war on federal unions?”
• Jocelyn Kaiser, Science, “NIH under orders to cancel $2.6 billion in contracts”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Speaker 1:

I got work. Who protects us? We protects us. Who protects us, who protects us, who protects us? We protects us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome everyone to another on the Ground edition of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez and I’m here in Washington DC right in front of the US Capitol Building where dozens of local union members and union leaders just held a rally as part of a national Kill The Cuts Day of Action. Similar protest rallies were held today from California to Illinois to New York. Organizers called for the National Day of Action to raise awareness and fight against the Trump Musk administration’s cuts and proposed cuts to federal research, health and education. As the homepage of the Kill the Cuts website states by cutting funds to lifesaving research and medical care.

The Trump administration is abandoning families who are suffering and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. These cuts are dangerous to our health and dangerous to our economy. On Tuesday, April 8th, 2025 workers across the country are standing up and demanding no cuts to education and lifesaving research. The National Day of Action is sponsored by a plethora of labor unions, including the United Auto Workers, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors, the Communications Workers of America, ame, SEIU, the Debt Collective and more. I came down to the DC action to talk to union members about this fight and what their message is to the Trump administration, to the labor movement and to the public.

Speaker 3:

Alright, we’re our last speaker. We have got Margaret Cook, who is the vice president of the Public Healthcare and Education Workers Sector of the Communication Workers of America. Let’s give it.

Margaret Cook:

I am a little short. Let me move this back a bit. Good afternoon everybody. Yes, I am your last speaker and I promise I won’t be like a Baptist preacher. I’m not going to keep you for another hour. My name is Margaret Cook and I am the public healthcare and education worker sector Vice President of Communication Workers of America representing over 130,000 state municipal and higher education workers across the country in Puerto Rico, including thousands of researchers, lab technicians, public healthcare clinicians and nurses, and thousands of additional support and wraparound staff, many of whom have seen their work shut down, cut off, and possibly killed by these cuts. You’ve heard from all of these people about today. Cuts that are illegal, cuts that are unethical, cuts that are immoral cuts that are unacceptable, cuts that are fatal. And I don’t mean just figuratively

Speaker 1:

Because

Margaret Cook:

As you’ve heard today, these cuts to research that will, these are cuts to research that will save lives. And so our message is pretty clear today. Kill these cuts before they kill us. I’m proud to stand here today with all these other members and leaders from labor who are going to work each day to deliver care and discover solutions for each and every one of us, which is a lot more than you can say for the people who are doing the cutting. You got the world’s richest man on one hand and the world’s most arrogant man on the other.

These men are living in a fantasy world, which may explain one of the reasons why they are so hostile to science. I’ve sat back and I’ve listened to them talk about how they need to cut back on the size of our federal government and to do so by going on a rampage against these workers who are doing some of the most critical and vital work that our government does. Well, what they aren’t telling you because they’re liars and cheats is that today the size of the federal workforce is the smallest it has been since the Great Depression at just over 1.5% of the jobs in this country, years of plundering public dollars for corporate greed, decades of austerity and slashing and burning the public good has left our government smaller than it has ever been, and these jackals aren’t done tearing away at it. And for what? Let’s cut the crap on the racist dog whistles about DEI, setting aside for the sake of argument, the fact that we do need to address inequality and injustice. Are you really telling me that the cuts to people working on cancer research is about DEI, that the cuts to people working to deliver vital aid and care is about DEII see right through it and I know you do too.

The reality is we need more public investment, not less because what is it that our investments really do? What these workers do is they discover, they educate, they provide care, and they prevent and act in emergencies, in labs and research settings across this country, these workers are discovering cures and treatments for diseases that threaten all of us. My grandfather died two days ago from stage four cancer, and my mother currently has stage two in campuses and schools. They’re educating and helping elevate the knowledge of future generations in clinics and hospitals and public service facilities. They’re delivering care to people who need it and in dire straits from outbreaks of viruses like measles. Measles, y’all.

These are people who put themselves at risk to protect the rest of us, and that’s who Trump and Musk and a bunch of kids without any real world knowledge and experience are trying to fire Trump and Musk whose genius lies and putting their name on work and breakthroughs of other people and then have the nerve to charge rent for it well enough. This money is the public’s and we demand that it be used for the public good. Not one penny less. No. I firmly believe for us to meet the incredible challenges and realize the potential of our country, we need so much more public investment. That’s why we’ve got to unite across our unions, across all kinds of work and across our communities to stand up, speak out, resist these attacks, and defend the services and work we do for the people we serve and work for. Lives are on the line. These cuts are wrong. So I say again, kill these cuts or they’ll end up killing us. Thank you.

Matt Brown:

My name is Matt Brown and I’m the recording secretary for NIH Fellows United. We’re a local of the UAW number 27 50.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Matt, thank you so much for talking to me, man. The kill cuts rally just concluded here. The Senate building is right behind us, but for folks who aren’t here right now and are listening to this, can you just say a little bit about what we just witnessed? What brought you guys out here today?

Matt Brown:

Of course. Yeah, max, I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the pod and what brought us out here is saving the completely devastating cuts that are currently happening to publicly funded research here in the US at NIH Fellows United. We’re members of the intramural scientific team at the NIH that are working on things like carrying cancer and making treatments for diabetes, and we’re partnering up with all the folks that are being affected by the cuts to the extramural side of the NIH. So all of the universities and other institutions that receive grants to work on those same things outside of the NIH. And yeah, it’s been really great to see all of these people come together to save the life-saving work that we’re all doing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Say more about the extent of these cuts and the impact on research intra and extramural. I guess give listeners a sense of how deep this goes and what the impacts are really going to be.

Matt Brown:

This is truly an existential crisis for biomedical research in America. Flat out the cuts to the intramural program have seen thousands of jobs cut from the people that support the science that we do. And on the extramural side, the cuts that we’re seeing to grants these so-called indirect costs, it’s a bit of a jargon term that can be hard to parse, but really that goes towards supporting the life-saving research that we do. The cuts that we’re seeing are going to decimate the amount of research that we can get done on these awful diseases that people face. And like I said, this is an existential question, do we want biomedical research to continue or not?

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what about, let’s talk about the flesh and blood workers who are making this research happen and the working people who benefit from that research. Who are these cuts actually hurting right now?

Matt Brown:

These cuts are going to affect every single person. Historically, scientists and researchers have been considered somewhat apolitical quote because, hey, who doesn’t know somebody that’s been affected by cancer? Right? It’s pretty easy to fund cancer research because it can be so devastating. And so yeah, everybody’s going to be affected by this. It’s not just the researchers here at NIH and Bethesda. It’s not just the researchers at universities, but it’s going to be every single person who has or has known someone with a really awful life altering disease.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what’s the message? What was the rallying message that we heard here today for folks in attendance and folks who aren’t in attendance? What are these unions doing to fight back and what are you saying to other folks about how they can get involved?

Matt Brown:

Well, really what I think the rallying call is, is to look around us. It’s look at who are the people that are trying to save each other’s lives. Here it’s the organized workers that are involved in biomedical research around the country. We’re not hearing things from NIH leadership. We’re not hearing things from university leadership. We’re hearing things from the organized researchers who are getting their butts out here to try to save what we do. And that’s really what this is, is it’s about getting as many people out here as possible and all moving in the same direction to not just save our jobs and not just save science, but to save lives around the country.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And last question. I mean, there were a number of different unions present here and represented here. What does it mean that this is such a crisis, that it is bringing together different sides of the labor movement and uniting around a common fight?

Matt Brown:

Absolutely. And actually that’s a very special question to me because as NIH Fellows United we’re one of the unions that was part of organizing this as well as reaching out to other universities, one of them being my former bargaining unit with teachers and researchers United, which is local of UE 1 97. And so

Yeah, it’s been really special to see people come together and not just start organizing the workers in their own workplaces, but reaching out to everybody else in their own regions, in their own careers and making sure that we’re all pointed at the same thing, which is saving lives. This is obviously not some sort of move towards government efficiency, that everything that the Trump and Musk administration is doing right now is entirely done to antagonize workers and make us feel like we’re hopeless. But things like today show us that we’re not and we need to continue doing things like this along in the future to make sure that they can’t move on with their destructive agenda.

Rakshita Balaji:

So hi, my name is Rakshita Balaji Currently I’m a post-baccalaureate fellow, a researcher at the NIH. So what that means is I’ve been spending the last almost two years now post-graduation from getting my undergrad degree working at the NIH and getting training in order to prepare myself for success in my next step of my career stage, which is to go to graduate school and I’ll be a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania coming this fall. So what I’m interested in is neuroscience research, and that’s what my career trajectory has been so far.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. Well, congratulations on your acceptance and good luck. We need you out there. For folks who are listening to this who only see an acronym when they hear NIH, I’m not asking you to sort of describe everything that goes on there, but could you just give folks a sense of who actually works in the NIH and what kind of work is being done there?

Rakshita Balaji:

Yeah, this is a great question and a question. I actually had myself when I was young and going into the NIH or the National Institute of Health, I was 22 when I joined, and I actually also had no idea what goes on behind those gates. And it turns out what I’ve learned so far is that the N NIH is full of awesome people who are passionate about their work, but they’re also not, maybe the scientists you think of in the media that work isolated in a lab in an ivory tower doing crazy experiments. These are people who have families, people who have loved ones who have been affected by diseases and people who really want to make a difference in healthcare in America. And so I just want to first make the point that the NIH is full of regular people who just happen to love what they do and love science, just like everyone in this country is passionate about what they work on.

And so National Institute of Health is comprised by a bunch of different sub institutes. So they’ll work on things like allergies and diseases, cancer, pain, neuroscience, looking at neurodegenerative diseases, looking at aging. There’s a bunch of different types of research that’s going on in order to serve every subset of someone’s health profile and all of the different types of diseases or different afflictions that people can have throughout the us. And what’s also really special about the NIH in particular is their ability to use their knowledge and their resources to target diseases and conditions that are not necessarily as prevalent. So for example, rare diseases where people oftentimes don’t always find care in their own physician settings or don’t always find the right answers, just going to the doctor that doesn’t have the research or the exploratory privileges that people do at NIH. So for example, we look at diseases where the population of people that suffer from them can be so small, yet they don’t go ignored because our clinical center has people who are specialized in learning about specific genetic mutations or specific, I think that’s, yeah, specific genetic mutations for example, or specific diseases that don’t always get studied.

And so the NIH not only tries to serve the general public in terms of looking at complete profiles of people’s health, but they also can target their resources to looking at things that oftentimes go under the radar and give care to people who oftentimes don’t find answers whenever they go to the doctor and they actually find those answers in possible treatments at the NIH.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Could you tell folks listening what these cuts, everything Doge and the Trump administration are doing, what does this all look like from your side of things and how are you and your colleagues been responding to it? What do you want folks on the outside to know about what it looks like on the inside?

Rakshita Balaji:

Yeah, so the first thing that really comes to mind when I was thinking about these cuts, especially what’s happened February 14th, April 1st, it’s almost like a trap door. You’re sort of walking into work, you’re getting prepared. Maybe you got your kids ready for the day, maybe you got up and made breakfast and lunch and you made sure that everyone was ready, you got into work and suddenly the four just falls apart beneath you because you no longer have access to your work email. You no longer have access to your data. You are no longer as appreciated as you thought you once were as a federal employee, and all of a sudden you are left stranded without a job, maybe on administrative leave, not knowing if you’d have the chance to come back. And it sort of is almost like a disappearing act is what it really felt like for no apparent reason.

And that’s the worst part to hear that the numbers are the most important thing. How many people can they get rid of? How many people can they actually eliminate? Rather than thinking about how many lives are actually just being torn from underneath people? That’s kind of all I can describe it as. It’s a really strange disappearing act. You don’t know, we had the manager of our building, someone who takes care of our building when we have leaks or have issues with our labs, be fired on this random day and then reinstated the next. It’s all very chaotic. And this chaos is preventing us from actually being able to move forward with our work, which might’ve been the goal, but actually ends up harming way more people than just us doing the work, but the people that we’re trying to serve. So that’s the best way I can describe it. It was immediate, it was forceful, and it was completely and utterly uncalled for. I mean, we had people who were dedicated employees for over 10 years, 20 years, just suddenly say, I’m no longer able to come in. People who couldn’t even email anyone telling anyone that they were fired and had to shoot texts to people that they knew because they were immediately locked out of their computer. I mean completely. It just felt like a huge slap in the face.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think the response from so many people has been fear and shock, and it’s almost been immobilizing because there’s so many executive orders, so many cuts, so much bad news hitting us day after day, which we know is part of the quote, flood the zone strategy. But what we are seeing, especially in recent weeks is anger, mobilization, organizing and the coming together like today of different unions. So there are different kinds of actions that folks are taking, whether it be going to these town halls and screaming at their elected officials or writing emails or doing mass protests. What we’re seeing here today is more about what unions and what workers can do when they come together with their labor power to fight this. So I was wondering if you could just talk a bit about that. What is the message here about what workers and unions in these agencies and what the labor movement can do to fight back against the Trump agenda?

Rakshita Balaji:

Yeah, so I think the first word that comes to mind is solidarity. I mean, we’ve now seen that an ultimate betrayal take place from our own employers and from our own administration showing us that we’re not valued. And so the only solace and the primary solace that I think is the most powerful has been within one another. We come into work, the morale has been extremely low. It feels like you’re trudging through molasses just trying to get one day to the other. And really all you can do with all that pent up frustration in order to not let it implode you is to actually share it with others and to bring community about it. And I think the most important thing that our union has brought about is that sense of solidarity, that sense of information, connection, network, especially when the actual protocol for all of these things has been so unclear going from a fork in the road to a riff, more acronyms might I add. The only place that we can really get answers is by sharing information and having open lines of communication with one another. And so the community that we fostered, I think that’s our strength and that’s what we want to preserve through all of our labor movements and unions is to understand that knowledge is power and we’re not afraid to share it with one another. We’re not afraid to speak the truth time and time again and to talk about our experiences and we will not be shut behind a door and left out of this conversation anymore.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what comes next? I guess for folks listening to this, what’s your message about why this is the time to get involved and what they can do?

Rakshita Balaji:

I think with regards to when is the time, my only answer would be when else is the time? This whole period of time since the inauguration has felt like an avalanche, like you mentioned, it’s a barrage of information that usually makes little to no sense and has harmed so many people. So what other time do we have? I think because the only question I’d have, when else do we come out and do this as we need to be active and keep pushing back in the moments that things are happening and that’s how change occurs, what people can do. I think if you’re hopefully angry just like we are, you can call your representatives, keep telling them the stories, especially if you have been a victim of these removals from your job or a victim of the lack of funding for your research or even how this administration has been shaking up your life.

Those are important stories. Your story is as important as everyone else’s, and to not undervalue the power of your voice, whether it’s calling your representative, showing up to these protests, being in unison and harmony with other people, because not only will you find solace in that, but you’ll create strength and to look and try to plug into your local communities as well because typically you’re not the only one who’s going through this. And you can definitely find people who are willing to help you, willing to give you information and speak up. Don’t be afraid to ask questions whether it’s about, regardless of, for example, if you’re worried about things related to your immigration status, if you’re worried about things related to how your funding’s going to work, how you’re going to receive, are you going to receive a pension? These questions that have gone unanswered, echo it as much as you can because through those echoes, you’ll find answers within other people and eventually those echoes will be heard by people who can do more to help make a change and actually protect us from these kinds of ridiculous actions.

And again, if you’re angry, I think anger only will boil up inside of you if you let it fester. So the best thing to do is to release it at places like this, find local movements, do some searching, and look for places you can actually get your voice heard. And I promise that you don’t, don’t feel like you need to be someone special with the name or an acronym that helps you move forward. Just let yourself be heard and give yourself grace during this time too. And I hope that together we’ll be able to make this change together. Don’t lose sight of the power we have within one another when it feels like we’re being towered over. We actually are on an even playing field if we have each other, and we can begin to even that out in numbers if not in position.

Amanda Dykema:

My name is Amanda Dykema and I am a shop steward with AFSCME Local 10 72 at the University of Maryland College Park.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Amanda, thank you so much for talking to me today. I know you got a lot going on and the crowd is dispersing, but I wanted to ask if you could just tell us a bit about what we just witnessed here and what brought all these folks out here to DC today?

Amanda Dykema:

Yeah, well, I think you saw people from all kinds of different unions and different kinds of workplaces who are all impacted by the same thing, which is these cuts that are happening to research and medicine and scientific innovation and education, and they’re hitting all sectors. And what we’re seeing is at the University of Maryland, faculty’s grants that were approved and have been ongoing for years being abruptly terminated with no cause. We’re seeing faculty grants that went in last year not being reviewed on review panels and we’re seeing cancellation of programs that have had huge impacts for things like expanding the STEM pipeline to people who have been historically excluded from it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What’s on the ground impact of this? What would you want folks to know who are maybe just hearing about that and they’re saying, oh, that’s good. That’s eliminating waste. It’s getting rid of woke programs. What do you want folks to know about what these cuts are actually doing to your members and the people who benefit from their work?

Amanda Dykema:

So my members at the University of Maryland, we support all university services. You can see my t-shirt says we run this university. And so what it does for our members is those of us who work for research centers are concerned about the futures of their jobs. And for our students, we’re seeing student workers who are being let go because the funding’s not there anymore. For students who were looking for careers in these sectors who came to the University of Maryland to learn how to do this kind of research, if a research lab gets shut down, they’re not able to learn how to do that. They’re not able to prepare for grad school, they’re not able to go on. But mainly what we’re seeing is a chilling effect that faculty, students, and staff really have to work together and get organized to fight against. They want people to stop this kind of research. They want people to be scared, and we are here to get organized and work together so that we can fight against that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What are the long term effects? If that doesn’t happen, if these things go through unchallenged, what are the long-term effects going to be for the University of Maryland specifically and higher ed in the United States more broadly?

Amanda Dykema:

That’s a big question. I’ll give it my best shot. The University of Maryland is a preeminent public research university. It’s the flagship of the state, and we have hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding every single year, and it funds all kinds of work. We heard today from a climate scientist. I work really closely with a lot of people in the College of Education who do work on K 12, and we have researchers in the humanities, in history, in museums, in data science. All of those agencies that fund that type of work have been subject to significant cuts, and those people will not be able to do their jobs or there’ll be a greatly reduced scope and the trickle down effect or the very obvious effect of their research. And when it comes to broader impacts on society, we’re not going to see those things. We’re not going to learn what is the best way to teach kids what is the best way to create climate resilient communities? We’re not going to learn those things if we don’t have this research funding.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So what was the message today about how workers and unions can fight back? I mean, it was really powerful to see so many different unions represented

Amanda Dykema:

Here,

Maximillian Alvarez:

And so that in itself seems significant. But I guess where does it go from here? What can rank and file folks listening to this do to get involved?

Amanda Dykema:

Yeah. Well, the number one thing, I’m going to say it every time is get organized. If you have a union at your workplace, join it. We’re more powerful together. If you don’t have a union at your workplace, work on getting one because we’re not going to be relying on whether it’s the president or whether it’s university administrators. We can’t rely on them to protect us. We have to work together to protect ourselves. But otherwise, the thing I really heard today was a lot about medical advances and people’s health. We’re going to see, if someone is not familiar with a research university, they might not know what this means, but if they go to their doctor and there’s not a clinical trial available for their diagnosis, they’re going to see what it means. And so I think what we’re trying to do now is reach out to our legislators who, the thing I haven’t said so far is that research is a huge economic driver for every state in this country.

And so we’re reaching out to our legislators to say, not only on its merits should this research be funded, but this is going to gut communities. This is people work in these labs and then they go and they spend their paychecks in their hometowns. And so what we’re asking is for people to understand that this isn’t a kind of an ivory tower thing that only impacts universities. It’s a thing that impacts everyone in this country. Senator Markey talked about health doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, and so people need to realize how this will impact them and their loved ones.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, I was a PhD student at the University of Michigan, which is like the largest or one of the largest employers of that entire state.

Amanda Dykema:

Exactly. I’m from Michigan.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah,

Amanda Dykema:

Now that you’re listeners will care, but yes.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and any final messages that you have because we are also at the same time that these cuts are being pushed through experiencing a violent, vicious state crackdown on the very right to dissent against such things to speak out against such things, and universities are becoming the flashpoint for that war on free speech.

Amanda Dykema:

Well, I think the other reason we’re all here today, the people who came to this rally, we work at agencies like NIH and institutions like the University of Maryland, and we have to pressure our administrators to stand strong in the face of this. Trump clearly wants to stifle free speech, but what is a university, if not a place where people learn and grow through free speech expression and exposure to ideas. And so if that’s really our value, we have to call upon not only our legislators, but our administrators at these institutions to stand strong.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank the guests who spoke with me today. It’s cold out here in DC and I’m about to head back home to Baltimore. But I also want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you cannot wait that long, then please go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism like this that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez reporting from Washington DC. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

We go to Gaza for a report on the brutal conditions of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians from Abubaker Abed, a 22-year-old journalist who has recently been diagnosed with malnutrition as a result of Israel’s total siege of the Gaza Strip. “It’s unending misery,” says Abed. “We’re here stranded. We’re seeing the systematic killing of everyone, as Israel is targeting every single one here in Gaza.” In the week since Israel’s abrupt desertion of its ceasefire agreement, says Abed, the total suffering in Gaza “is much worse than ever before.” He pleads for international intervention and accountability. “As long as the world allows Israel to do so, this will not stop.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

On Monday, Israeli strikes killed two Palestinian journalists: Al Jazeera’s Hossam Shabat, who was 23 years old, and Palestine Today’s Mohammed Mansour, who was killed in his apartment alongside his wife. This brings the total number of journalists that Israel has killed in Gaza over the past year and a half to 206. Just before his death, Shabat had shared news of Mansour’s killing on social media and filed an article with Drop Site News describing Israel’s scorched-earth campaign in his hometown of Beit Hanoun. His editor Sharif Abdel Kouddous remembers Shabat as a “warm and funny person,” dedicated to his job and his community. In recent months, he had been under increasing surveillance by the Israeli military, which labeled him a terrorist and placed him on a “hit list.” Despite being “targeted and openly hunted,” Shabat “continued nevertheless to cover the genocide of his people.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Turkish authorities detained Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Wednesday, accusing him of corruption and connections to terrorist organizations. The arrest comes just before the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was set to nominate him to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the 2028 election.

Imamoglu, a leading figure in the CHP, gained prominence after winning the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019, ending over two decades of control by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the city of 19 million. Recent opinion polls have indicated that Imamoglu could defeat Erdogan in a presidential vote.

On Wednesday morning, as authorities arrived to detain him, Imamoglu shared a video on X declaring, “We are facing great tyranny, but I want you to know that I will not be discouraged.”

CHP leader Ozgur Ozel condemned the arrest, describing it as “a coup against our next president.” Despite the detention, CHP plans to proceed with its scheduled primary on March 23.

The Turkish government has denied opposition allegations of political interference, asserting that the judiciary operates independently.

The arrest has sparked protests across Istanbul. Authorities have responded by banning demonstrations in the city for four days and reportedly restricting access to social media platforms.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that approximately 100 people, including journalists and businessmen, had been taken into custody on suspicion of criminal activities related to municipal tenders. They also said a separate investigation had resulted in charges against Imamoglu and six others, accused of aiding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated a terrorist organization in the country.

The arrest followed the revocation of Imamoglu’s degree by Istanbul University, citing “nullity” and “clear error” in his 1990 transfer from a private institution in northern Cyprus. Imamoglu has said he will challenge the move in court. If upheld, the cancelation effectively disqualifies him from running for president, as Turkish law mandates that candidates hold a valid university degree.

In a show of solidarity, Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas announced on Tuesday that he is suspending consideration of his own run. Yavas stated, “I am announcing to the public that I am suspending my decision to evaluate my presidential candidacy… until this unlawfulness is eliminated.”

Following the arrest, the country’s financial markets experienced significant turmoil. The Turkish lira depreciated by up to 14.5% against the US dollar, while the BIST 100 equity index dropped 5.9%.

The next Turkish presidential election is scheduled for 2028. Erdogan has reached his two-term limit and is ineligible to run again unless the constitution is amended or an early election is held.  In the 2019 municipal elections, Erdogan’s AKP party suffered significant losses, with the CHP winning major cities, including Istanbul and Ankara.

Erdogan himself began his political career as mayor of Istanbul. He also spent time in jail in 1999 for reciting a poem that a court ruled incited religious hatred.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by RT.

Methane is a powerful but fast-acting greenhouse gas — it packs a big punch in the short term and weakens over time. Studies show methane is responsible for 20 to 30 percent of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. U.S. oil and gas operations are collectively responsible for emitting more than 6 million metric tons of methane every year — the equivalent of 10 percent of the country’s annual CO2 emissions, if you’re looking at a greenhouse gas’s first 20 years in the atmosphere. Methane is the primary component of natural gas, which often leaks out of drilling sites, pipelines, and storage facilities.

When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he made it clear that he intended to become the first president in American history to successfully take on climate change — a goal that necessarily included targeting methane emissions. In 2022, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — legislation that offered hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives, loans, and grants to households, utilities, and industries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. 

The IRA also amended the Clean Air Act to include a provision that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a methane fee for major producers of oil and gas — essentially, taxing fossil fuel companies for every ton of the greenhouse gas they emitted above a certain threshold. The legislation included subsidies to help producers who emitted methane over the legal limit to install gas-trapping technology to reduce their emissions. 

The rule the EPA finalized in November last year, technically called the Waste Emissions Charge, would have applied to facilities that produce volumes of methane that exceed the equivalent of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The fee started at $900 per ton of methane in 2024 and would have risen to $1,200 per ton in 2025 and $1,600 in 2026 and every year beyond that. Most big oil and gas companies already meet the standards laid out in Biden’s fee, which means they wouldn’t have had to pay anything. The EPA was supposed to start tallying up fees this year based on 2024 emissions data, but Republicans repealed it before the agency could start collecting penalties.

The fee, had it taken effect, would have been the first-ever federal tax directly imposed on a greenhouse gas. It would have applied to roughly a third of the methane emissions that come from oil and gas infrastructure in the U.S. and diverted 1.2 metric tons of methane through 2035 — the equivalent of taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars offline for a year. 

Shell, BP, and other oil majors supported the initiative. But other parts of the oil and gas industry, and Republicans in Congress, opposed it. 

“No one wants to do business when the federal government creates regulations that will put them out of business, which is what this natural gas tax is doing,” said Republican August Pfluger of San Angelo, Texas, the Congressman who wrote the measure that Trump signed on Friday. Pfluger’s district overlaps with the Permian Basin, the highest producing oil field in the U.S. “In reality this rule has only stifled American energy production, discouraged investment, and increased energy prices across America,” he said. 

Pfluger’s pessimistic view of the health of America’s oil and gas industry is at odds with what official reports say. America’s fossil fuel producers are on a winning streak by every measure. The U.S. is the largest exporter of natural gas in the world, and crude oil and natural gas production hit record highs in December. The Texas oil and gas industry broke new production records on Monday. 

“It’s hard to imagine how a country that’s breaking records for production is being somehow constrained,” said Jon Goldstein, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund’s energy transition program. “I don’t think that argument really holds water.”

However, the tax tackled only a sliver of U.S. methane emissions. The American agricultural and waste sectors produced almost twice as much methane as fossil fuel production between 2010 and 2019. But clamping down on emissions from those sectors is challenging. Methane emissions from agriculture come from myriad decentralized sources, like cows and manure storage facilities, making them difficult to regulate. And the amount of methane agriculture produces depends in large part on consumer eating habits, which are hard for the government to control. 

Despite its limited impact, the methane fee was a step in the right direction, experts said. “There’s an order of operations in which we need to implement climate solutions,” said Daniel Jasper, the policy director for the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown. “Methane is something we call an emergency brake, because we’ve got to do it now.” 

The fee is one of seven climate and environment policies Republicans in Congress are targeting using the Congressional Review Act — a law that gives lawmakers the authority to reverse recently-passed regulations with a simple majority vote. But Republicans only repealed the EPA rule establishing the methane fee — not the IRA provision permitting the application of such a fee in the first place. If that remains intact, a future presidential administration could pick up where Biden left off. However, Republicans in Congress have signaled that they intend to repeal as much of the IRA as possible in the coming months, including the portions that empower the EPA to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump repeals America’s first-ever tax on greenhouse gases before it goes into effect on Mar 17, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

ProPublica’s feature documentary “Before A Breath,” directed by Nadia Sussman, will have its YouTube premiere on Thursday, March 20, at 8 p.m. Eastern.

“Before a Breath” is a tender, infuriating and ultimately hopeful story of three mothers who have lost children to stillbirth and are now striving to make pregnancy safer. The film explores an experience shared by thousands of families in the U.S., where more than 20,000 stillbirths occur each year. At least a quarter of those losses are probably preventable.

After the stillbirth of her daughter, Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya goes to Washington. She finds herself battling entrenched political inertia as she fights to pass the SHINE for Autumn Act, legislation named for her stillborn child. Kanika Harris, a maternal health advocate, takes change into her own hands, telling the story of Kodjo and Zindzi, the twins she lost, as she trains a new generation of Black birth workers. The stakes for making birth safer crystalize as we meet Stephanie Lee, a nurse administrator in Manhattan who, while seeking answers about her daughter Elodie’s stillbirth, takes the ultimate leap of faith. We follow her as she prepares to give birth again, under the care of the Rainbow Clinic at Mount Sinai, which offers specialized care for parents who have experienced these losses.

Inspired by Duaa Eldeib’s groundbreaking reporting, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, this film shines a light on the aftermath of stillbirth, an experience often shrouded in silence.

“Before a Breath” will also be distributed by The WNET Group. The film is a production of ProPublica. It is executive-produced by Almudena Toral and produced by Sussman, Lisa Riordan Seville and Liz Moughon, who is also the director of photography. It was edited by Margaret Cheatham Williams, with additional editing by Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi. Where and how to watch

After the film’s debut on YouTube on Thursday, March 20, “Before a Breath” will be available to stream on ProPublica’s YouTube channel and at youtube.com/ThirteenWNET and thirteen.org. There will also be a number of free and open-to-the-public screenings at cinemas and other venues across the country.

Join us for a virtual discussion about the film

Join us on Wednesday, April 2, at 4 p.m. Eastern for a panel discussion with the filmmakers as they welcome the film’s main participants to share their powerful insights and experiences surrounding the stillbirth crisis. Reporter Duaa Eldeib and director Nadia Sussman will be joined by Kanika Harris, Stephanie Lee, Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya and Dr. Joanne Stone, founder of the Rainbow Clinic at Mount Sinai.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by ProPublica.

Amidst the dark chaos, we got a "masterclass in effective resistance" this week when former NFL punter Chris Kluwe rose in a California city council meeting to decry a dumb, unctuous proposed plaque that spells "MAGA," which he deemed "explicitly a Nazi movement." As the packed room cheered, he declared he would "now engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience," went limp as police rushed him, and got arrested for the crime of telling the truth.

Kluwe's action came as the ravaging of democracy continues apace. The figurehead president is so out of it he didn't know Russia started the war in Ukraine - sullenly calling the popular Zelensky a "dictator" who "never shoulda started it" - or that his sycophant Treasury Secretary met with Zelensky who no wasn't "sleeping." He also didn't know the head of Social Security just resigned, Medicaid is being massively cut, plundering Fuhrer Musk "accidentally" fired several USDA avian flu experts as the disease spreads widely and the agency is "working to swiftly rectify the situation." Some suggest he may not know those things 'cause he's a demented ole man who's spent more than half his first ungodly 31 days "in office" at his golf courses or crappy hotels, though he did emerge to randomly kill New York's new "congestion pricing" tolls to raise money for mass transit, approved after four years and 4,000 pages of federal review, by posting, "New York is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!" Not so fast, Jack. New York, along with everyone else, is suing.

Also, buyers' remorse is in the air, and some people are memorably speaking up. Illinois Gov. J.B Pritzker, despite being a billionaire, offered up a furious. eloquent tirade about "watching (what's) happening in our country right now with dread" as "the authoritarian playbook is laid bare." "The root that tears apart your foundation begins as a seed of distrust, hate, and blame...They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems," he said. "Tyranny requires your fear, your silence, and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage." Echoing him, AOC was in Tennessee to proclaim, “Every day our job is to wake up and say ‘what can I do today?’ There is no act too small. Every action matters." And so, somewhat improbably, to Chris Kluwe, a former NFL punter for the Minnesota Vikings and, more vitally, a longtime champion of good who made headlines years for speaking up - yes, a straight football player ! - for same sex marriage. Kluwe played in the NFL for eight years, retiring in 2012.

For the last 15 years he's lived in Huntington Beach, California, a rabidly MAGA-infested town whose cringy city council giddily proclaim themselves the “MAGA-nificent 7." Look at them: Ewww. In recent years they've banned the rainbow flag from City Hall for Pride Month, moved to screen children's books for sexual content, pushed for voter ID at the polls and, last month, just to confirm its viciousness, voted to make it "a non-sanctuary city" for brown people. Now, upping the toadying factor - also the dumb one - they've proposed an acrostic plaque to be set outside the town's public library to celebrate its 50th anniversary. "Through hope and change, our nation has built back better to the golden age of Making America Great Again," it reads, and then ingeniously, vertically declares, “Magical," "Alluring," "Galvanizing," and “Adventurous." Get it?!? It spells MAGA!! See?!? AAMG!! (Alluring, Adventurous, Magical, Galvanizing). What, are they all 8 years old? Just kill us now.

So Chris Kluwe, 43-year-old Huntington resident and decent guy, showed up at Tuesday's City Council meeting to tell them what he thought of their “propaganda” and offer a calm but robust indictment of what MAGA really means. And it was great.

"MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children. MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy and most importantly, MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement. You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is."

The room erupted in cheers. Then, still calm, almost weary, he announced, 'I will now engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience." And he did. He walked up to the council on the dais, stood there a moment, and as frantic cops rushed around him, sat down and went limp.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Kluwe is not an elected official, an unelected bureaucrat, a billionaire, a pundit. He's just a white guy, former football player, patriot and mensch who's fed up with what's being done to what is still his country. His small act of good trouble made headlines everywhere, from the LA Times to Sports Illustrated to Fox News. A phalanx of brave police carried him out; he was arrested on a charge of disturbing an assembly, and spent about four hours in the city jail - four hours, we suspect, he felt were well-spent. "What you’re seeing in Huntington Beach is a microcosm of what’s happening nationally,” he later told the Times. “This is what happens when MAGA gets power.” Citing his own "position of privilege and power" - he played America's game! - he insisted he has "the responsibility to step up and do something," as do others of his ilk, when faced by Nazis. "I can help protect the oppressed," he said. "Because it shouldn’t be on the people who are being oppressed to fight by themselves.”

State troopers prepare to attack John Lewis and other Selma marchers on Bloody SundayBillboard photo of Spider Martin's 1965 Two-Minute Warning from art collective For Freedoms

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

Within the first month of the new Trump administration, the federal government has already become nearly unrecognizable. Operating through the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been given carte blanche to wage war on every part of the government that stands in the way of the business and investment needs of the billionaire class. The ongoing attacks on the Treasury Department, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are just the opening salvo of a broader, darker plan to remake American society and government to serve the interests of the largest corporations and most powerful oligarchs. On this week’s livestream, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez will speak with organizers of the emergency rally that took place on Monday outside of the CFPB building in Washington DC to protest the Trump administration’s moves to effectively shut down the agency. Then, we’ll speak with media critic and TRNN columnist Adam Johnson and tech critic Paris Marx about DOGE’s attacks on democracy, Musk’s agenda, and the grim future of technofascism materializing before us in real time.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden, Adam Coley

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  Welcome to The Real News Network, and welcome back to our weekly livestream.

The Trump administration has effectively shut down the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the very agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage lending scandal. Since its creation, the CFPB has clawed back over $21 billion from Wall Street banks, credit card companies, and other predatory financial institutions for defrauded customers. Russell Vought, an unabashed Christian nationalist, founder of the far-right think tank the Center for Renewing America, a primary architect of Project 2025, and Donald Trump’s newly Senate-confirmed acting director of the CFPB, ordered all agency staff in an email Saturday to stop working and to not come into the office.

Hundreds of federal employees and protesters mobilized for an emergency rally in front of the CFPB headquarters near the White House in Washington DC on Monday. Democratic lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters spoke at the event, which was organized by progressive organizations Indivisible, the Progressive Change Institute, MoveOn, Americans for Financial Reform, and the National Treasury Employees Union Local 335, which represents CFPB workers.

Here’s Sen. Warren speaking to the crowd on Monday:

[CLIP BEGINS]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren:  This fight is about hardworking people versus the billionaires who want to squeeze more and more and more money. And now, now is our time to put a stop to this.

[CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  On Tuesday night, just 24 hours after that demonstration, dozens of CFPB employees were notified over email that they had been fired. For his part, Elon Musk, richest man in the world and unelected head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, celebrated the shuttering of the agency, posting Sunday night on X, the platform that he owns, Musk wrote “CFPB RIP” accompanied by a tombstone emoji.

Now Musk, it should really be noted, has a big fat obvious conflict of interest here. Just last month, his site X announced a partnership with Visa to offer a real-time payment system on the platform. And yes, the CFPB would’ve been scrutinizing the whole thing in order to make sure that users weren’t scammed and didn’t have their sensitive information stolen. Now it won’t.

But the wrecking balls that Musk and Trump are swinging through the government right now are doing incalculable damage that goes far beyond the CFPB as we speak. Trump’s administration appears dead set on manufacturing a constitutional crisis if and when they openly defy court rulings, ordering them to halt their numerous illegal moves to shut down agencies, seize operational control of government finances, and to access everyone’s sensitive government data. There’s very much a Silicon Valley esque move fast and break things strategy that’s being applied here.

And the big tech oligarchs of Silicon Valley who threw their full support behind the Trump-Vance ticket have much more at stake here than just Musk’s payment system on X. Through Trump, Musk, J.D. Vance, and others, Silicon Valley and its technofascist oligarchs are waging a coup of their own right now, rewiring our government and our economy to serve their business and investment needs and to accelerate the coming of the dystopian future that they envision for all of us.

Over the course of this livestream, we’re going to break down this technofascist takeover of our government that’s unfolding in real time. We’re going to talk about what the consequences will be and how people are fighting back. In the second half of the stream, we’re going to talk with media critic, Real News columnist, and co-host of the Citations Needed podcast, Adam Johnson, and we’re also going to speak with Paris Marx, renowned tech critic, author, and host of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us.

But we’re going to start right now with the chaos at the CFPB and the protest action outside the DC agency headquarters on Monday. We’re joined now by Aaron Stephens. Aaron is the former mayor of East Lansing, Michigan, a senior legislative strategist with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and he was an organizer of Monday’s CFPB protest.

Aaron, thank you so much for joining us, man, especially with everything going on. Can you start by just giving us and our viewers an on-the-ground account of Monday’s action? How did it get organized? What did you see and hear on the day, and what were the real core rallying messages of the event?

Aaron Stephens:  Yeah, thanks for having me. So this is a really difficult time. I think that everybody’s dealing with a fire hose of news, the Trump administration taking actions, especially taking actions on Fridays, Saturdays to try and get away from the news cycle, to hide some of the worst things that they’re doing during the times when people might not be paying attention.

But we got news that some of the DOGE, those, I think, 20-something-year-old tech folks got into CFPB and started accessing some really sensitive data that the CFPB has and were looking to shut down the agency. You have to remember that Elon Musk, back when Trump first won reelection, tweeted that the CFPB was a redundant agency and one that needed to be deleted in the first place. So this is something that we were expecting to see, but of course we didn’t expect things to happen in the way that it did.

This is an agency that, DOGE, of course, is Elon Musk, is not an elected person. There’s been no act of Congress to authorize anything that’s been happening over at the CFPB, but we saw basically a takeover of the agency. People being told stay home, people being told don’t work.

And so we quickly mobilized with some of our congressional allies and some of our allies like Indivisible, MoveOn, the union folks, and Americans for Financial Reform to show that this was not going to be something that folks just stood by and let happen. We had about a thousand people there, maybe more, many, many members of Congress.

And I want to highlight the fact that it wasn’t just members that care and talk about consumer protection every single day. You had freshman members like Yassamin Ansari and senior members like Maxine Waters who are on the financial services committee, and Elizabeth Warren who, obviously, is the matriarch of this agency, but a lot of support from within the party here to really push back on what’s going on. The core message being that we’re not just going to stand by and let Elon Musk take over at this agency, and we’re not going to let what is really the financial cop on the street die in the darkness.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s talk a little more about that. For folks who weren’t at the rally or for folks who are maybe not fully up to speed on what the CFPB itself does or did, let’s talk a little more about what the CFPB does, why it was created. And as much as we don’t want to speculate, of course we can’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but if we have a shut down of CFPB, what is that going to mean for people?

Aaron Stephens:  I think you really have to look back at why this agency was created. This agency was created after the financial crisis in the late 2000s. This is an agency that is meant to hold banks and corporations and financial institutions accountable for malfeasance and advocates for consumers when they are wronged. This is an agency that, for instance, somebody who has been paying their mortgage on time, but the bank has been misapplying those payments as late and then their house got foreclosed on, they go to the CFPB. And the CFPB is the one that steps in and says, actually, you guys were in the wrong here. We’re going to keep this person in their house. They are the people on the street advocating for consumers. So getting rid of an agency like that is going to leave millions of Americans without somebody to go to.

I want to point out some of the numbers here. The CFPB has returned over $20 billion to consumers. It has a billion dollar a year budget and it has returned over $20 billion to consumers just on actions against corporations that have taken advantage of them alone. You have folks like Wells Fargo that have been taken action against, and they’ve had to pay back $2.5 billion for misapplying mortgage payments, like I mentioned before, and a lot of other actors that are, quite frankly, in the tech space, which Elon Musk is very, very related to, that are seeing action taken against them as well.

And so you can see the throughline there. Not having this agency protect consumers will mean that corporations will have a much, much easier time stealing from consumers and not having any kind of retribution against them.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I guess this is as much a disclosure as anything, because it’s very hard to sit here as a journalist, as editor-in-chief of The Real News Network talking about this, but I’m also someone whose family lost everything in the financial crisis. I’ve been open about this my whole media career. It’s where my media career started. We lost the house that I grew up in. This agency was created because so many millions of families like mine got screwed over in the 2008 financial crash, and now here we are, 15 years later, being told that shuttering this agency is a win for, I don’t know what, efficiency…?

Aaron Stephens:  For who? If you talk about efficiency, again, I’ll point out $20 billion returned to consumers, a billion dollar a year budget. That’s efficient to me. And we’re talking about an agency that is literally dedicated to protecting consumers. So the only thing that I could say this would be efficient for is helping big corporations take advantage of people. There is no other reason to go after an agency that is dedicated to making sure that people have a fair shake in a financial system that is usually difficult to navigate and sometimes, unfortunately, as we’ve seen many, many times in the past, takes advantage of consumers. There’s no reason to go after an agency like this other than to make it easier for those folks to do that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I think that’s a really important point, and I want to build on that in a second and talk about what the attack on the CFPB tells us about the larger attack that’s happening across the government right now. But I would be remiss if I didn’t ask if you’ve heard anything from the folks at the CFPB who lost their jobs this week, or anyone that you were talking to on the ground on Monday. Our listeners want to know.

Aaron Stephens:  I want to couch this and make sure that the point of this really is to talk about the consumers that are affected by this, but there is a really important story that is not probably going to be as told, which is that there are civil servants that dedicated their lives to basically saying, you know what? — And many of them have very similar stories to you. I saw somebody get taken advantage of, my family got taken advantage of, and now I’ve dedicated my life to fighting for consumers, and this is the agency that I’m part of. All of those people got an email that said, your work’s not important, stop doing it.

And so that’s why so many workers showed up on Monday. And their message was very, very simple. It was, we just want to do our job. We just want to protect people, let us do our job. You’ve got hundreds of people that they’re probably not making as much as they might be able to in the private sector, and they’re doing their best to try and protect people, and they’re just basically being told this isn’t important anymore.

As part of a larger plan, we’re seeing the same playbook at different agencies. I’m not going to be surprised as Elon Musk goes and attacks Social Security, attacks the Department of Education. These are services that affect working families everywhere across the country, and you don’t see him having the same kind of vitriol to a large corporation that’s taking advantage of people. It’s very, very clear that what’s going on right now is they’re dismantling the agencies that are protecting people just to give tax breaks and give an easier time for billionaires to take advantage of consumers.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s tease that out a little more, because I would hope that that is the clear and obvious message that people are taking away from it. But you know as well as I do that, it’s not that easy, unfortunately. We’re going to talk about this in the second segment with Paris Marx and Adam Johnson, but this is as much a war over what Musk and Trump are doing as it is over the perception about what they’re doing.

And so I see people all the time, people I know, people I’ve interviewed, people in my family who are right-leaning or maybe politically independent, who are still very much buying the Musk and Trump line that this is all being done in the name of efficiency, rooting out longstanding corruption and wokeism and all that crap.

So I wanted to ask if, in good faith, if we want to talk to folks who are feeling that way and thinking that way, what does the attack on the CFPB, how does that fit into the larger project that you just described? How can people take that and what’s going on at the Treasury, and just what the hell is going on here and what’s the end game?

Aaron Stephens:  Let’s talk through some of their playbook, because what Elon Musk and Donald Trump will do is they will find one little line item budget thing that they know they can message on, and they will say, look at this inefficient spending, and it’ll be like $10 million in a budget of a billion. And they’ll say, look at this inefficient thing, this is the thing that we’re cutting. And they won’t talk about the millions and millions of dollars going to help consumers. But that’s the thing they’ll talk about so that way they can message to folks, no, no, no, look, we’re cutting. We’re cutting and we’re being efficient. But the reality is that they’re saying that publicly so that way behind the scenes they can cut the things that help people.

And so I think that the CFPB is, and one of the reasons why we are so passionate about it, is because there are so many stories of people being helped by this agency.

I’ll give another random example, although there are literally thousands. People that went to a for-profit college that was not accredited, took out large loans for this, and the CFPB helped state AGs sue that for-profit college, which led to not only money going back to those folks, but also loans being forgiven. Those are people that would’ve been in debt for probably the rest of their lives for a degree that wasn’t even accredited, and that’s the CFPB, that’s what they’re doing.

One of the reasons why I think centering this agency in this fight is a very, very good thing to do is because there are thousands of stories of people really going out there and seeking help from the CFPB and that agency doing the right thing.

One of the rules that they most recently announced, which is a great rule which is now being attacked by congressional Republicans, is their medical debt and credit reporting rule. You’re talking about folks that, for those who don’t know, when you have an amount of medical debt, it goes on your credit report and it can significantly impact your life in the future, not being able to get a mortgage or not being able to get a car. And sometimes those procedures are just not things that you can control. And the statistics have said it and the studies have said it over and over again: Having medical debt does not actually have any real determining factor on whether or not you’re going to be paying back car loans or house loans, and it really doesn’t affect anything. In fact, Experian has even said that publicly.

And the CFPB said, you know what? This should be something that we address. We should not have medical debt [be] something that is reported on their credit report. And there are thousands of stories of people saying, I had a procedure done in the ’90s. It was out of the blue, I couldn’t control anything about it, and now 20 years later, I can’t get a house. I have two kids and I can’t get a house. Those are the people that are affected by closing this agency.

And so I think centering those stories is really, really important in this conversation. And just talking about, really, who is Elon Musk and Donald Trump on the side of? Is it on the side of that person that is trying to get a home for their two kids, or is it on the side of the banks that just want to make sure that they can make every last dime out of these consumers? And I think the answer’s fairly clear to that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I think that’s powerfully put. And we do need to center these stories, if only to get people out of the hazy miasma of Trumpian rhetoric and actually see the reality in front of them. We were talking about this two livestreams ago, a day after the horrific plane crash in DC where over 60 people lost their lives. But that was another clear-cut example where the government bureaucrats, the deep state, useless, evil, faceless folks in the government are actually air traffic controllers. They’re working people who are making sure our planes don’t crash when we come in and out of an airport. They’re also the people in the CFPB, the NLRB, talking to workers about organizing every day. If you just look at this in terms of big awful government but you’re not actually seeing the details, we’re going to be sleepwalking into even more dangerous stuff.

And I want to hover on that point for a second because for people who are not right in the middle of this, people who don’t live and work in DC, and even for people who aren’t employees of the government and they’re really only seeing this from the outside through the media and social media, I wanted to ask you, since you were there, you’re in it, how are people who work in government responding to this? What is the range of emotions that you’re hearing and seeing from your colleagues there in DC?

Aaron Stephens:  I do live in Michigan, so I go to DC fairly regularly, but I’m here on the ground in the wonderful, greatest state in the country. There’s folks that are there that are terrified. They get an email one day that says, don’t come into the office, you’re working from home. Get an email the next day that says stop your work entirely.

And I think it’s very important that we engage the union in this protest too, because those are real folks that have families, jobs, lives that are completely in limbo because there’s an unelected billionaire that decided that he wanted to tweet to delete the CFPB, and that’s a really scary reality to live in currently.

To your earlier point about people not really feeling or understanding what a government employee is, I want to point out, I was a mayor back in Michigan, and I think that people have different opinions about different levels of government involvement, but I’ll tell you, when the pandemic hit and you needed those folks out there making sure that people were getting access to vaccines or access to rental assistance or whatever else it was, those are government employees, they’re doing their job. And those backbone, really important things for society are what government employees do. I think we can have discussions about where we can direct policy or direct money more efficiently, but shutting down agencies that are dedicated to protecting people is not the way that we need to go about things.

Maximillian Alvarez:  There’s a larger complicated point here to be made, but I have faith that we can manage it because we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Two things can be true at once. What’s happening right now is a catastrophe, and plenty of government agencies have drawn justified criticism and ire from working people across this country. I’ll be the first to say it.

I talked to working class people living and fighting in sacrifice zones around the country, people in Michigan, people in Baltimore, people in places like East Palestine, Ohio, who have been polluted by private industry, government-run sites, all this crap. The point being is that that is what the Environmental Protection Agency was created in response to a half a century ago. The Cuyahoga River was on fire every other month, and toxic pollution was rampant, and people across the country rose up and said, the government needs to do something about this. And it was fricking Nixon’s administration who created the EPA and actually had an understanding that you need to have a level of enforcement there that gives people confidence that this agency is actually doing what it says it’s doing.

Now over the last 50 years, both parties have contributed in one way or another, either by just cutting the budget, vilifying the agency, or leaning more towards the interests of the corporations that the agency’s supposed to regulate. And so you end up with people like the folks I talked to in these sacrifice zones not trusting the EPA at all, because the EPA is telling them that they’re fine and they can stay in their homes while they and their kids continue to get sick.

And so that is the situation that we are in with so much wrought that has been created in well-meaning or established-for-good-reasons agencies. But that doesn’t mean you throw everything out with the bathwater. Again, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, otherwise we’re going to have nothing left at the end of this.

Aaron Stephens:  Right. And I want to put a fine edge point on that. What we’re not sitting here saying is that everything is perfect, but look at where they’re targeting. They’re taking the frustration that people have that’s valid with government or the way that things are happening right now, and they’re using that frustration to attack agencies that are just holding corporations accountable. Where is the energy from them going? It is not going to address people’s actual concerns about government. They’re taking the, again, valid concerns that people have about the way that things are right now, and they’re saying, great, my solution is to give away tax breaks to billionaires. And they’re doing it in a more couched way.

But the reality is if they cared about people being taken advantage of, then the CFPB would be enhanced, not taken away. And you see where they’re diverting their energy into cutting, and it’s for public services for working families. It is not that real angst — And again, real angst — From people that are just angry at the current situation and the way things are. So they’re taking advantage of folks’ fear, unfortunately.

Maximillian Alvarez:  That, in many ways, is the political difference here between this MAGA-fied Republican Party and what I guess we would tend to call the Democratic establishment, not the whole party itself, but very much the ruling side of the party.

Trump, for all of his lies and the scapegoats and fictive enemies that he creates, is still identifying and speaking to those touchpoints of neoliberal system failure that people feel in their real lives. What is our counternarrative? What is the opposite vision of the future and governance that is being offered instead of the wrecking ball that is the Trump administration? That’s a question that all of us need to sit with.

And it’s a question that leads into, we only got about 10 more minutes here before we move into the next segment, but I didn’t want to let you go without asking about what this all means for the Democrats who are still in office right now, this party that people are looking to as the core institutional opposition to what Trump and the GOP are doing right now.

Axios dropped a story, which I’m sure you saw, earlier this week, sparked a lot of justified outrage all over the internet. And this article said, “Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in the room — on Monday complained” about pressure from activist groups, including ones that helped organize Monday’s action and are putting them. They’re really pissed about the pressure these groups are putting on them to get off their butts and do something. And there was a quote from this Axios article that said, “‘It’s been a constant theme of us saying, “Please call the Republicans.”’” And that was from Rep. Don Beyer from Virginia, basically throwing up their hands and telling their constituents, hey, we’re in the minority now. There’s nothing we can do, go call the Republicans.

Is this the pervasive attitude from Democrats on the Hill right now that you’re hearing? Who’s fighting back? And tell us more about the work that you’re doing with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to be part of that fight back.

Aaron Stephens:  I think it’s important to note, I think everybody’s seen the responses to some of that article, but also the positive responses to our rally on Monday where Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren stood up and said, we’re not going to stand by. Or Maxwell Frost trying to get into USAID. People want to see Democrats fighting back. They feel like, at this moment, they are getting just hounded with news every single day from a different Trump administration action that is going to harm them in the long term or in the short term, and they want to know that their representatives are fighting back.

And so I think that some of that frustration is just going to manifest in people calling their Dem representatives and being like, what are you doing? And I think it’s important that Dem leadership hears that. I think that we as an organization are going to continue trying to channel our members to make sure that action is being taken on the Dem side and that we’re using every single tool in the arsenal, whether that be in the funding fight or whether that be pushing stateside, pushing on AGs and the courts. Whatever it is, people need to see Dems fighting back.

I certainly agree that this is a Republican agenda and we need to be holding them accountable for what they are doing. But again, people need to see Dems fighting back. And if they don’t see that, then they’re going to feel like they’ve been abandoned by the party that claims to be the ones that’s fighting for them.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Picking up on that, for folks out here who are watching and listening to this stream, what would be your message to them about why they should fight back and the ways they can? It could be calling your elected representative, but for folks who are maybe feeling like they’re not getting anything out of their representative right now, but we don’t want to leave folks feeling hopeless and powerless, that is never our aim. What’s your message to the folks around you, the folks you talk to these days about why they need to fight, not give up, and the different things that they can do to hold this administration accountable, preserve the things in our society, in our government that need to be preserved? What’s your message to folks right now?

Aaron Stephens:  My one big message is we need more stories being shared. There are millions of people in this country that have been impacted that are on Medicare and would be in a very, very bad situation if that was reduced, or Social Security, or again, had good action taken by the CFPB, or had their grocery store saved in their local community because the FTC stopped a merger. Those things, those stories need to be amplified.

And I think that it’s important that people are not just apathetic about the situation. I know that it’s difficult given just how much is going on, but show up to the town hall for your congressional member, stage a protest, do it in your own district. We need to be showing that, again, we are not going to stand by and let this happen.

And quite frankly, I think that Democrats need to see that when they do stand up and when they do take real action that they have support. I think they do just based on what the response was to this rally and what happened at USAID. But I think that we need to be also, while still calling out the folks that are maybe a little bit quieter, we also need to be celebrating the folks that are out there fighting the fight and make sure that folks know that if they do stand up, they’ll have backup. And I think that’s important to do.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah. Well man, I want to have you back on soon because there’s so many other big questions to talk about here: What’s going to happen when we hit the debt ceiling crap again? What can we expect in the coming weeks, months, and years of this administration? We’re only one month into this thing, so we gotta pace ourselves, but we gotta know what’s coming ahead so that we’re not constantly immobilized by the onslaught of news on a given day. So having that long view, I think, is important for all of us. And I do want to have you back on to talk about that in more depth.

As we close out, I did want to ask if you had any thoughts you wanted to share on that, or if there were any other upcoming actions that you wanted to point people to? I’m hearing that there’s a national day of action that federal workers are going to be participating in on the 17th. Are there agency demonstrations that you know happening in DC? Just anything like that that you wanted to put out there before we let you go. And also tell folks about where they can find you.

Aaron Stephens:  Yeah, so feel free to find me on Twitter, @AaronDStephens — I’ll still call it Twitter — And go to boldprogressives.org, sign up for our listserv. We’ll send out action alerts on protests and different things that are going on there. We’re also going to be collecting stories from folks that are affected.

And I think, again, just because we have those connections in the Hill amplifying those of offices, so they have things to really push for, and they have a little bit more ammunition when they’re having these conversations on the Hill is important. And as you said, fortunately, it’s a marathon that feels like a sprint right now with everything going on. We just need to keep it going. I’d be happy to come back on. Thanks for having me.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Thank you so much, man. We really appreciate you being here. I appreciate the work that you’re doing. We hope to have you back soon, man. Thank you again.

Aaron Stephens:  Thanks so much. Have a good one.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Alright, gang. So we’ve got another hour in our livestream today. We want to thank again Aaron Stephens, senior legislative strategist with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, who was one of the organizers of Monday’s protest outside the CFPB. Thank you to Aaron. Please follow him on X, or Twitter, if you want to stay up to date with Aaron.

And now I want to bring in our next two guests here. They’re longtime friends of The Real News. We’ve interviewed them separately a number of times. I’ve had the honor of being on Citations Needed. Adam himself writes for The Real News. So I’m really, really grateful to see your faces and to have your critical voices here with us, guys.

And I just want to make sure, for folks who are watching, if you are living under a rock and you don’t know about Paris and Adam’s work yet, I actually envy you because you’ve got a lot of great work at your disposal. But Paris Marx is a Canadian technology writer whose work has been published in a range of outlets including NBC News, CBC News, Jacobin, and Tribune. They’re also the host of the acclaimed podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, which everyone should go listen to, especially right now. Paris is also the author of the excellent book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation, which was published by Verso Books in 2022.

And we are also joined by the great Adam Johnson. Adam hosts the Citations Needed podcast, which everyone should also listen to. And Adam writes at The Column on Substack. He is a columnist for us here at The Real News. You should read every column he’s ever written for us because they’re all bangers and all critical media analyses. And he also writes for other outlets like The Nation.

Paris, Adam, thank you both so much for joining us today. We got a lot to talk about, and you guys are exactly the folks I want to be talking to about it. But I wanted to just, by way of transitioning from that first segment with Aaron into our discussion, if you guys had any comments on Musk, Trump, and votes attacks specifically on the CFPB, and any thoughts you had on why they’re going after the CFPB that maybe we didn’t cover in that first segment.

So yeah, Paris, let’s start with you, and then Adam, we’ll go to you.

Paris Marx:  Sure. Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that the CFPB is low-hanging fruit and something easy for them to take on. We know that the right has not liked this agency for quite a while, and then we can also see that an agency like that is going to hinder some of what Elon Musk and these other tech billionaires want to be doing. We know Marc Andreessen, for example, has been angry at this agency and blaming it for debanking people in crypto, which is probably not true, but is one of these conspiracy theories that he has embraced.

Elon Musk, of course, has ambitions of moving Twitter or X into payments and financial services and things like that. It is not a surprise to me that he would want to take on the CFPB right as he is getting into an area like that. And of course, as I understand, the CFPB has also looked into Tesla in the past and issues with Tesla. So yeah, it’s not a surprise to me that he wants to take on this agency, and I think we’re going to see him take on a lot of other ones as well and try to dismantle them too.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Adam, what about you? Were you surprised? You look surprised. You don’t look surprised at all [laughs]. Oh, wait, you’re muted, brother.

Adam Johnson:  My apologies. I want to start off by saying I thought that the intro, Max, you gave at the top of the show about 37 minutes ago was excellent. I don’t usually kiss ass to my host, but that was very, very well written, established the stakes. I thought that was really well done. I forget because you edit me, but you should do more writing. It was very good. It’s a complex thing to break down, and I don’t usually kiss the ass of the host, but I’m doing it.

But to answer your question, yeah, I mean, look, he’s obviously going after the liberal administrative regulatory state. These are all the Project 2025 wishlist, Silicon Valley wishlist of people they want to go after. He is going after it in a different way than previously. He is going after it in a way that is obviously not legal, which is another way of saying illegal. He is doing it in a way that is blatantly illegal, knowing that there’s not really any mechanism to hold him accountable. They are now openly and flagrantly violating judges’ orders, district judges’ orders. My guess is it’ll have to be escalated to the Supreme Court.

And again, as your previous guest mentioned, the fire hose element is because liberal good government groups and progressive groups only have so much resources, so everyone’s putting out fires. As you know as an editor at a progressive publication, that’s what these last three weeks have been, is just putting out a series of fires. That’s part of their strategy because they have far more resources. And of course, as you also mentioned as —

Maximillian Alvarez:  OK, so we lost Brother Adam for a quick second, but he’ll be back on. But yeah, I mean that is something — Oh, wait, do we have you back, Adam?

Adam Johnson:  Did I fall out?

Maximillian Alvarez:  You froze for about 30 seconds there, but go ahead and pick right back up.

Adam Johnson:  So sorry. I apologize. I said, while Democratic leadership in Congress has been largely a no-show, although that’s changed a little bit lately… Oh shoot.

Maximillian Alvarez:  OK.

Adam Johnson:  Hello?

Maximillian Alvarez:  Yeah. So little. Hey, man, it’s a livestream baby. So technical issues —

Adam Johnson:  I’m not sure why my wifi says it’s operating at full capacity. I’m not sure what’s going on. I apologize.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, you’re good, man.

Adam Johnson:  I was in the middle of my denouement, and now I’m interrupted. Now I feel —

Maximillian Alvarez:  All right. Give me the denouement, baby.

Adam Johnson:  Well, now there’s a lot of pressure to make it a good denouement. No, I was saying that governors had pushed back, but they are attempting to dismantle the liberal state that they know they couldn’t possibly dismantle through Congress or other legal means.

Because here’s the thing, and this is, I think, a dynamic people have to appreciate, which is that Musk can try to do a few dozen illegal things and then what’s the pushback? He gets some court order that says, no, you can’t do that, but he can’t lose anything. It’s not like he’s going to go to prison, and to say nothing to the fact that he’s obviously abusing stimulants and surrounded by a bunch of Nazi Zoomers who are egging him on. So he’s very much high on his own supply. But he can’t lose, he can only be curbed. And so from his perspective, he’s thinking, what are they going to do, take away my birthdays? He can illegally try to shut down whatever department he wants, Department of Education, Department of Labor, to get rid of the NLRA and the NLRB, whatever, name it, because what does he have to lose by doing that? Nothing.

The only limiting thing is two things: Number one, how much resources they have on their end, but two, it will ultimately be congressional Republicans, because it’s very clear, obviously, Trump can’t run again. Musk doesn’t give a shit if this harms the long-term Republican Party brand. The only real counterforce here, other than lawfare, which Democrats are doing and ought to do, which is suing them, as well as these progressive groups like Bold Progressives and others, is that Republicans do have to run in 2026. And if they’re running on putting grandma on cat food, that doesn’t sound as good as going after whatever woke chimpanzee, transgender studies or some other bullshit they make up.

So right now they’re doing this… This is the project, this is the Heritage Foundation’s wet dream, and this is what we’re seeing. We’re seeing these full-blown assaults on the liberal and administrative and regulatory state because it serves Silicon Valley, it serves non-Silicon Valley, the wealthy in general. Again, we’re getting $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. We’re doing the 2017 tax cuts on steroids. This is why most billionaire money went to Trump and Republicans, despite their faux-populist rhetoric and token attempts to make taxes tip-free for waiters or other such trivial nonsense.

And so they’re just going to go until somebody stops them, because why not? Again, what’s the downside? It’s Trump’s. It’s not like Musk is going to get arrested for violating the law.

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, no.

Adam Johnson:  And even if he did, Trump would just pardon him. And this is why — Sorry, real quick I want to say one thing. This is why the Jan. 6 pardons were so key, because it’s a signal to every right-wing vigilante and every hardcore right winger that they can pretty much do anything they want that’s illegal so long as they are advancing the MAGA cause, and they can expect to not be held accountable so long as it’s a federal and not a state crime. So as long as they go from Kansas to Nebraska and commit a crime pursuant to Trumpism, Trump will pardon them no matter what, even if they have a record of all kinds of horrific crimes.

And so that kind of vigilantism and that kind of lawlessness is completely taking hold. That is an escalation from previous… The policies themselves are boilerplate Republican policies, but the extralegal, extrajudicial tactics are an escalation, they’re new. And we’re seeing some of the ways in which Democratic leadership either can’t or won’t be prepared to really address it on those terms.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And it’s even been, like you said, from the first time Trump was elected eight years ago to now, there has been a notable and concerted evolution of the MAGA movement to basically state sanction vigilantism. And you can see the examples of that, not just in Donald Trump and J.D. Vance cozying up to known vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse or the guy who strangled the poor man in New York on the subway.

That celebration of typically white men vigilantes, but also baked into the MAGA-fied legislation that’s been creeping through state Houses all across the country where you see the weaponization of citizens’ impulse for vigilantism as a necessary part of executing the policy. That’s why you get abortion laws in Texas that are encouraging everyday citizens to sue anyone who helps with an abortion, even the Uber driver who drives you to the clinic.

These types of policy points are making the point that Adam made there where you have a party that is not just pardoning the Jan. 6 insurrectionists for their crimes against the country and their violent crimes, but also sanctioning this type of vigilantist mode of politics in other policy areas as well.

I do want to come back to that in a few minutes, but I wanted to, before we get too far afield, come back to the big question that I wanted to ask you both because it’s a question that I feel is at the center of your respective areas of expertise. It’s in that Venn diagram overlap, and it’s something that I’ve been getting asked from our viewers a lot about. So I want to ask if we could break what’s going down now from this angle, because this is as much a war over what Musk and Trump are doing in practice as it is a war over how people perceive what they’re doing and how they want us to perceive it.

I have seen plenty of right-leaning people that I’ve interviewed from sacrifice zones and unions from around the US sharing Newsmax posts that are framing this all as a heroic, historic moment. And Musk is out there rooting out corruption, and I’ve seen others sharing Musk memes with his resting rich face and the texts saying, “‘They’ Lied and Stole from you for Years, and now ‘They’ — ” All caps — “want you to be ANGRY at D.O.G.E. from PROVING it. LET THAT SINK IN.” So this is the war that’s going on right now.

Paris, I want to start with you, and then, Adam, kick it to you. How would you describe the difference between what Musk and Trump say they’re doing and what they’re actually doing right now?

Paris Marx:  Well, it’s a gulf, right? But I feel like it depends on what you’re looking at. These are people who are talking about making government more efficient, making it work better, but actually they are embarking on a major austerity program in order to gut the US federal government and, in particular, the aspects and the departments and the agencies within the federal government that they have personal distaste for.

And not just them personally. Certainly, Elon Musk and his companies will have certain agencies that they want to go after and certain programs that they want to go after. But Adam was mentioning before, we can see the outline for this kind of program in the Heritage Foundation and these other right-wing groups that have been wanting to, basically, launch this campaign against the federal government for a very long time, to remake it.

By bringing in the tech industry and bringing in someone like Elon Musk, you get the ability to frame this as something that tech is doing to give it this framing that it is modernizing the government rather than taking it apart. And in particular, as they are starting to try to do mass layoffs, people often point to what Elon Musk did at Twitter as a comparison for what they’re trying to do with the federal government, where Elon Musk came in, laid off a ton of staff, most of the company, and then kept it running.

And they want people to believe that the government is a ton of fraud, a ton of waste, that you can just get rid of all these workers and then you’ll still be able to provide the services that the US government provides, run the government as it is, because there’s just all these useless bureaucrats who are around. Which is a right-wing narrative that we have been hearing for ages. This is not a new thing.

But what they’re also doing as they embark on this project is to say, yes, we’re going to gut all of these workers, but also now we’re going to roll out these incredible AI tools that are going to be able to do all the work of these various workers to provide these services. Because look, AI has become so much more powerful over the past couple of years. They’ve been spreading these really deceptive narratives about how AI is reaching this point where it’s going to be nearly as powerful as a human being, and it has this understanding that it didn’t have before, and it’s so much more capable.

And a lot of that is bullshit, but it really helps with this larger program to say, we are going to gut the government. We are going to bring forward this massive austerity program, but it’s okay because technology is now going to fill the gap because technology has gotten so much better. To present this as inherently a technological problem, not so much a political one, where they are using technology as a form of power against all of these workers and against, really, the American public as they embark on this massive transformation of the government.

And so far it has been focusing on specific agencies, but we’ve already seen the suggestion from people like Elon Musk that they’re going to have to go after Medicare and Social Security and these other programs that so many Americans rely on. It’s not just going to end at these things that they perceive as only being about the culture wars and things like that. It’s going to expand much greater as they continue down this road.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I have so many thoughts on that, but Adam, I want to toss it to you.

Adam Johnson:  So from the beginning of this stupid DOGE narrative, I’ve been pulling my hair out because the way it’s covered is the exact opposite of the way it exists in reality. I often compare it to the Biden ceasefire talks. It’s just a fictitious alternative reality that has no basis in fact. And the media’s running with it because if you’re powerful, editorially speaking, you’re assumed always to have good faith, even if there’s facts that completely contradict reality. So any skepticism is seen as being too ideological, too outside the lane of mainstream reporting.

So about two weeks ago, I wrote an article criticizing the media covering DOGE as a “cost cutting” or to find waste and abuse, these ostensibly postideological, tech-savvy, as Paris said, and we can get into that, the use of the ways that we’re doing a whole episode on the ways in which AI becomes this moral laundromat where you say, oh, we’re going to fire a bunch of people, which sounds evil, because don’t they have jobs? Oh, don’t worry, we’re going to replace them with AI. But it’s bullshit. Everybody knows it’s bullshit. It’s a way of firing people so they can have more control. These so-called bureaucrats, which is to say those who are part of the liberal and administrative state they loathe because they want to be able to fucking pollute rivers without anyone giving them any flack.

And the way the media covered this was, again, this is someone in Elon Musk who, if you follow his Twitter activity, which everybody in media does because mostly they don’t have a choice, he jams it in front of your fucking face. He posts right-wing white nationalist memes all day from 4chan. White genocide is a huge, “hashtag white genocide is a huge part” of his worldview. He’s obsessed with knockout game type lurid, VDARE, straight up white nationalist propaganda, has been doing this for years. Inauguration day, does a goddamn Sieg Heil three times, clear as day, non-negotiable, not even ambiguous, not well, maybe — No, no, clear as day does a Sieg, Heil — Oh no, it was just a troll. Oh, it was a Roman salute. Again, you can’t ironically murder someone. You can’t ironically do Nazi propaganda. You either do it or you don’t do it, OK?

So you would think this would be, OK, let’s interrogate what he means by waste and abuse. Is this how some bean counter at the OMB sees it? Is this someone, one of these admittedly right-wing think tanks like a center for tax fairness or one of these Peter Peterson Foundation? No, to him, waste is an ideological assertion. Fraud is an ideological assertion. 

Keep in mind, he’s been lying for weeks about fraud, citing public fucking databases that are already online as if it’s some great revelation that he’s found, oh, they did this, they spent this so-and-so USAID or State Department or whatever. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a public database and it’s not fraud, it’s just how government spending works. So he’s been overtly lying for weeks.

And yet, as I wrote on Feb. 3, this is how it was covered. The New York Times, they referred to DOGE as, “finding savings”, “budget cutters”. In a later article, they wrote “cost-cutting effort”. They called it “an efficiency panel”, “a cost-cutting project”. The New York Times wrote on Jan. 12, 2025, “DOGE is a cost-cutting effort to seek potential savings.” Washington Post did the same thing. “Government efficiency commission”, “non-governmental fiscal efficiency group”, “the efficiency group”, “proposed savings”. So here’s someone with overt neo-Nazi ideologic — OK, maybe that’s too hard for you. We’ll say far-right tech billionaire, whatever, someone who’s overtly ideological, and he’s consistently treated like someone who’s genuinely concerned with finding efficiencies.

Now, finally, after weeks of this shit, again, spreading outright lies about USAID — As much as I’m not particularly a fan of them, but just lying about them outright, completely making shit up out of context, accusing congresspeople of getting money from these organizations for some outright lurid conspiracy theories that, if he wasn’t the richest man in the world, we would say, this guy’s just an anonymous crank on Twitter, just completely made up horseshit.

They’re finally — They being the media — They’re starting to finally publish articles that commit the ultimate sin of reportage, which is the I word: Ideology, mentioning ideology. That this is not some postideological, postpartisan attempt to find deficiencies, but is, in fact, a right-wing attack on the liberal and administrative state for programs and departments that have been duly funded by the federal government. And a lot of these programs, of course, were begun under or continued explicitly by the Trump administration, but we can talk about the first one, we can talk about that later.

So here, finally we have The Washington Post — This is Aaron Blake — “Trump and Musk can’t seem to locate much evidence of fraud”. So now we’re finally pointing out that there’s no actual fraud, that them just calling everything fraud is like the Michael Scott “I declare bankruptcy.” You can’t just say it’s fraud. That’s a legal claim.

And so for weeks they’ve been saying there’s this fraud, and Musk uses this word all the time, fraud, fraud — OK, well, if there’s all this widespread fraud, Musk, then why has the Trump DOJ not arrested anyone? Because there’s no fraud. There’s just spending they don’t like, which they’ve now rebranded fraud. And then Reuters says “Musk’s DOGE cuts based more on political ideology than real cost savings so far”. So finally, after weeks of taking this at face value and in good faith — Which, again, is the holiest of holies, especially if you’re rich and powerful — Not if you’re, by the way, an activist, then you’re, as I note in my piece your ideology is…

I compared it to an article written about Democrats as part of a police reform panel, they referred to them four times as progressive, five different times as activists. So their ideology is put on the forefront. But if you’re a megalomaniac billionaire who shares white genocide all day that you took off white supremacist websites, ideology is just not mentioned. It’s not mentioned why you’re going after programs. They can say DEI — As long as you say DEI, not the N word, you can get away with anything, even though clearly this is racially motivated. Clearly it’s about chaining women to the stove. Clearly it’s about hating people with disabilities. Clearly it’s about hating gay and trans people. He fucking loathes trans people, posts antitrans shit all day.

So just now, I’m not in the business of complimenting the media, and it’s still obviously not nearly sufficient, but we’re just now seeing a pivot from people being like, oh, well maybe this isn’t about efficiency. Well, OK, it would’ve been nice had you done that before he destroyed several different federal programs. But we’re now seeing people realizing that indulging this premise of efficiency, which morons like Ro Khanna consistently do, boggles my mind. I mean, I know why. He’s got terminal lawyer brain and he fundraises with a lot of these Silicon Valley billionaires, so he has to play stupid –

That we’re like, OK, clearly this is a right-wing attack on the liberal and administrative state. It is entirely ideological to the extent to which you can even do efficiency nonideologically. Even that premise is suspect. But for someone who does a Sieg Heil on national TV, again, had you told me a month ago, well, Musk is going to do a very clear Sieg Heil on national TV and nothing’s basically going to change, and the ADL is a fucking shakedown operation, who he paid off a few years ago, is going to come to his defense, I’d say, now, clearly there has to be some limit to this. He can’t get away with anything. No, he’s got half a trillion dollars, he can pretty much get away with anything.

So we’re just now seeing, finally, people being like, oh, maybe his ideology is actually what’s motivating this rather than this… Again, I could go on and on. I have all these articles just in The New York Times cost-cutting panel, cost efficiency panel, reducing waste, fraud, abuse. It’s like this guy is sharing the most manic fucking right-wing chud conspiracy theories, completely misrepresenting how you read government spending documents and misrepresenting how you read RFPs, accusing Reuters of — By the way, he did that after Reuters wrote that article. I think that’s why they did it — Because an unrelated company owned by the same corporation did a defense contractor RFP on, I think, data protection or something. Not related at all to anything sinister. Completely takes it out of context, just consistently fucking lies all the time. Just straight up Alex Jones shit.

But because, again, because he’s so rich, he’s so powerful, people kept deferring to him as some kind of neutral expert, and it was literally driving me fucking crazy because sitting there watching this going, are we going to mention that he’s a white nationalist? Isn’t this kind of relevant since he’s going after specifically groups related to racial justice, civil rights, and, of course, anyone who, as you noted, anyone who undermines his bottom line ,just as a person who’s extremely rich?

Maximillian Alvarez:  All right, I got three quick things I want to say, then, Paris, I want to come back to you real quick. But the first is I would read the crap out of an Adam Johnson tongue-in-cheek weekly Low Bar Award where Adam Johnson rewards a publication for doing its basic-ass job of reporting the facts about something [laughs]. I would read that.

Second is just a note on the fraud thing and speaking, again, if we’re talking here as media critic, tech critic. In a former life, I was a trained historian, and so, for obvious reasons right now, I’ve been going back to my bookshelf and pulling all of the big history books that I have on the McCarthy period and the Red Scare, and I can’t help but hear what I feel are the very obvious and hackneyed echoes of the McCarthy period, when Sen. McCarthy’s there saying, I hold here in my hand a piece of paper with the names of communists in the government. And then you got this dickhead Musk out there saying like, oh my God, you won’t believe all the fraud I’m finding. I’ve got it all written here.

Adam Johnson:  He keeps doing these lurid, vague, conspiratorial appeals to some secret list he has, and it’s like, where? What are you talking about? And the evidence they share is just shit that was published already. It’s been online, been online because of good government sunshine law liberals, by the way. He’s just doing Alex Jones shit. He’s doing Alex Jones shit, but he’s so rich you can do it and no one cares.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and Paris, I have a question for you about that because, like I said earlier, this is a real struggle here over what the great Cory Doctorow would call seizing and controlling the means of communication. We’re not just talking about, like Adam said, not just rich billionaires. We’re talking about people who control the infrastructure and platforms upon which we communicate and commerce every single day.

And so, as much as this is the 21st century new digital politics that we’re all swimming in now, who controls the means of communication and who controls the means of public perception is really critical. And I bring this up because I can’t help but notice that, as we’re talking about here the narrative that Musk, Trump, Vance and their donors from Silicon Valley are trying to spin about this, I think your average person with a basic common sense can see the bullshit — But so much of them are not seeing it because they’re getting news on platforms that aren’t showing it. Or the algorithms are keeping them locked into echo chambers that are going to keep the points that we’re talking about here out of sight, out of mind.

I wanted to ask if you could talk about that side of things, as ridiculous as the top-down narrative about DOGE, about the government takeover that’s happening right now, what should people be considering about how these big tech overlords and their accomplices in the government are trying to also adjust our variability to see the truth for what it is here?

Paris Marx:  Yeah, it’s a frustrating one, and I feel like it’s not a uniquely social media discussion. If we look at news, we can see how, whether it’s cable news or radio, has been taken over by the right for years, and then they unleash similar strategies to try to shift how social media works, these narratives that cable news was too liberal and conservative voices were not present there or not as well represented. Meanwhile, you had Fox News pushing out these right-wing narratives. And good —

Maximillian Alvarez:  No, keep going. Sorry. Sorry. Keep going.

Paris Marx:  Yeah, sorry. Meanwhile, you had Fox News pushing out these right-wing narratives and all the liberal media adopting these framings and starting to talk about the issues that were being pushed by the right. What you had, very clearly, the right saw the opportunity to do this on Facebook and other platforms, where they kept saying that conservative voices were being silenced on Facebook or on Twitter, or because people were being moderated when they were posting hate speech, and things like that. And it was no real surprise that people on the right were being moderated much more for those things because they were much more likely to be saying them.

But even still, think years ago, you had Mark Zuckerberg going on this tour of America to talk to conservatives and all this kind of stuff to show that he was not going to give into censorship, and the types of things that he’s talking about in a much more animated way today. I feel like we have this narrative that there has been this shift in the social media landscape in the past little while with Mark Zuckerberg getting rid of the fact checkers and getting rid of everything that he considers woke at Meta, which I think was more of just an opportunity for him to get rid of a bunch of things that he didn’t want to be doing and to lay off more workers, which they’ve already been doing for a while now.

But we’ve seen social media companies already abandoning those sorts of things for a while before the election, up to a year or more ago. And there was a brief moment where they were doing some additional moderation during the pandemic in that period.

But for a very long time, these companies have been quite committed to these right-wing notions of free speech. Mark Zuckerberg and Joel Kaplan, who is now in an even more powerful position at the company, a Republican operative, they stopped Alex Jones’s initial banning on the platform for ages, kept pushing it off. They didn’t want to see Donald Trump be banned, all these sorts of things.

Social media is positioned as this place where we can all post what we want to post, and anyone can publish what they want on there. But the reality is that these are environments that are shaped in order to ensure that right-wing narratives are the ones that are being encountered most often by people, that the algorithmic recommendations are ensuring that you’re in that kind of an ecosystem unless you have explicitly tried to opt out of it. But even then, you’re still going to see a lot of this stuff.

And they are platforms that are premised on engagement in order to get ad profits. And what you do in order to make your ad profits is to piss people off a bit and serve them more extreme content so that they begin interacting with the world in that way. I think we saw that very clearly during the pandemic, when you saw people’s brains basically get fried. And it’s not solely because of social media that happened. There are many different reasons that these things have occurred.

But I think even just recently, if you think about before the holidays, people were losing their minds over all these drones that were like in the sky in the United States. This was a huge thing, and it was a big conspiracy theory, and even the mainstream media were covering it as though it was a real thing that people needed to be concerned about and not some bullshit that they needed to debunk. These are not just right-wing platforms, but platforms that spread a whole lot of bullshit that people end up believing because of the way that the information is presented and the ways that average people don’t have the media literacy that those of us who are constantly engaging in these things might. And even then, I would say that we occasionally fall for some bullshit as well. We occasionally see things that we might want to believe and then need to check into it and say, ah, damn, that was bullshit as well.

But anyway, that’s just a long way of saying that I think that these platforms, I called Facebook a social cancer recently, and that’s not just because of the recent changes that Mark Zuckerberg has made, but I think that these platforms have been very socially detrimental to the discourses that we have. And that’s not to say that traditional media is the most amazing thing in the world. Adam has a whole show where he discusses why that is not the case. But I think that we’re living in this media environment that is very polluted, that has a lot of problems with it, and the independent one that has been set up as the solution to it is often very much funded by these right-wing billionaires as well. And if you want to maximally succeed in the new media environment that’s being set up, you’re encouraged to be a right-wing piece of shit instead of to really hold power to account.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Adam, I know you got thoughts on that. Hit me.

Adam Johnson:  So here’s a fundamental problem, which is that the right wing embraces populism in the most superficial and aesthetic sense. They’re good at $50 million of condoms in Gaza, all these little thought memes, they’re extremely good at that, disseminating that to everybody. This idea that, again, Musk speaks in these demagogic or pseudo populous terms about he’s taking on the bureaucrats and the establishment — Again, he’s fucking worth $450 billion, but he’s taking on the man. Trump does this, obviously, very well.

And establishment Democrats and liberals run and are allergic to any form of populism. So naturally they’re going to fail in a media ecosystem where that kind of thing is currency, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. It is a party run by PR hacks and lawyers and eggheads, and they don’t speak in those terms, they don’t speak in that language, they don’t know how to fight back. And when someone within that milieu who’s better at speaking in those terms, whether it be Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, tries to defend the liberal administrative state, it can work, but it’s so rare.

And then meanwhile, you have people like Chris Murphy and talking about how, oh, actually Biden’s going to deport more people, and USAID is how we destroy China. And it’s like, well, that’s not a very populist framing, that’s just ratcheting up the racist machine.

And so there’s an asymmetry of what kind of rhetoric you employ. And again, Democrats, I think by design, just don’t have those kinds of [inaudible] talking points, the $50 million in condoms to dollars or whatever. They are talking about gutting $880 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. They’re talking about raising the retirement age. We’re talking about doing a lot of extremist right-wing shit.

And for a variety of reasons, liberals and Democrats have been unable to really message around that. They are a little bit better over the last week or so. But there hasn’t been a way of framing this as an elite attack on the liberal administrative state because liberals, for 30 years, have run away from the idea of government as something that’s good, something that actually protects you, that keeps your water clean, that makes sure that these fucking speed-addled billionaires don’t wreck every part of your life.

And I think what you see in the messaging asymmetry, the media ecosystem asymmetry, people did all this lamenting about why is there no liberal Joe Rogan? Why is there no Democratic media ecosystem? And it’s like, because the media ecosystem on the right embraces its extremists because they know, ultimately, it doesn’t really undermine their bottom line, whereas liberals’ fundamental project is disciplining, managing, and marginalizing the left, and partisan liberal content is just inherently going to be fucking boring. How many times can you spin for various unpopular policies rather than having a genuine space where you attack them?

And I think that plays into a similar dynamic here. So when we talk about why Musk has been good at messaging this, again, he goes on Joe Rogan, Rogan’s been doing a fucking six-month-long Musk puff fest about how great he is. This is someone who does have a huge working-class listenership. And they’re reframing themselves again, as Trump successfully did. And the cognitive dissonance of all these people being multi-billionaires is just something you put aside in your fucking brain somewhere. These are the rogue billionaires who are actually out to help you.

It’s what I call the, I dunno if you saw that Jason Statham film [The] Beekeeper. It’s this distorted vision of who’s fucking you over. It’s liberal bureaucrats and other billionaires, but not the good billionaires. And there’s also some cops, but some cops are good, and it’s really actually the deep state, but it’s USAID that’s really running the show behind the scenes, not the DOD or the CIA.

It’s obviously this warped vision because people, again, as you note, Max, in your intro and elsewhere, people have a vague sense that there is a system fucking them, and they need it to have a name and a face. And liberals don’t do that. They do this facile Republican billionaires — Oh, but they can’t reject billionaires because when the guy who just won the DNC said, we’re going to find the good billionaires, so we are going to take $50 million from Bill Gates, we’re going to take $50 million from Michael Bloomberg. So we can’t really have populist politics, so we have to turn it into this partisan schlock.

And I keep going back to Norman Solomon’s definition of neoliberalism, which is a worldview of victims but no victimizers. There’s never a fucking bad guy. And the extent to which there ever is a bad guy, it’s just this, again, it’s this particular billionaire here. It’s not a form of class politics. So it’s all very frustrated and limp and half-assed and doesn’t really resonate like the faux populism of the right.

To say nothing of the fact that they just have more control over social media, more control over, obviously, billionaires run the media, so there’s going to be a natural asymmetry that you can’t really do much about just by virtue of who funds things.

But you’re seeing that play out, and they are winning the messaging war to a great degree. Liberals have a liberal sort of elite media, your centrist media, New York Times, Democratic leadership in Congress. What’s the first thing they did after Trump won? You had Joe Scarborough go on TV and say, we’re going to work with Trump. We’re going to do bipartisanship. You had Hakeem Jeffries say, we’re going to work with Trump, we’re going to do bipartisanship, the minority leader. And there wasn’t a sense of, oh, we’re going to resist this time.

New York Times did a profile about how big liberal donors, Reid Hoffman, all these guys, Michael Bloomberg, are pulling back. They’re not really donating to the so-called resistance because, unlike last time, it can’t be filtered into this neoconservative project like Trump is.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I’ll say though, maybe one small bit of grace that we’ve gotten compared to the last time Trump was elected is we don’t have to suffer through year after year of mainstream media pundits saying today is the day Donald Trump became [crosstalk] [laughs] —

Adam Johnson:  Oh, well, yeah, that’s where a lot of the money went. They went through the conspiratorial Milleritism — Or as I ironically call it, Muelleritism. He’s going to come and he’s going to rescue you, and we’re all going to be saved at the 11th hour, and here’s an AI picture of Trump in prison clothes, and we’re going to get him.

In a way, that can create space for a genuine resistance where you do try to reorient a party that does address people’s root issues and economic issues and these genuine issues rather than the Liz Cheney brand. But I think that the point is that we’re going to work with Trumpism. Because whenever they say bipartisanship, nine times out of 10, or 99 times out of 100, they’re not talking about saving the spotted owl or preserving a natural — They’re talking about punishing Gaza protesters, increasing militarism against China. They’re talking about antiwoke stuff. That really was a bipartisan thing. Much of what Trump is executing is just an extreme version of what The Atlantic magazine and New York Times opinion pages have been advocating since, frankly, #MeToo, to some extent, George Floyd, which is like, oh, the wokes got too cute. They got overaggressive. We need to put them back in their place. And they view Trump as someone that could instrumentalize to do that.

So then Musk comes in and does this. And again, a lot of these austerity things Musk is doing is just kind of Bull Simpson on steroids. These are things that a lot of rich Democrats and rich Democrat donors wanted anyway, they just didn’t want it to go this far. And so to the extent to which Democratic elites and the media and Democratic leadership in Congress, again — Less so governors — Are responding now and actually are defending the liberal state, not just spooky stuff at USAID, but the very idea of a liberal state, I think it is coming from bottom-up pressure. I think it’s coming from these, not partisan hack groups, from genuine protests. I think you do see a liberal resistance, in a true sense, liberals.

There was a point where hardcore Democrat pundits on social media, total hacks, people that defended the genocide for 15 months would come on and be like, so are they going to do anything about this? And it’s like, yeah. And so they began to alienate even some of the more hardcore MSNBC set, and I think that’s why you’re seeing the shift now a little bit more.

Not to, God forbid I’m positive, but I do think, again, the lawfare stuff has always been there. A lot of the governors have been there. I hate Gavin Newsom, but he’s been suing, defending trans rights, the attorney general of California, Pritzker. These guys have been suing. It’s not like people are doing nothing.

But actual Democratic leadership has had no consistent message. They have no little $50 million in condoms to Gaza meme stuff. They have nothing to really counter the narrative that Musk is somehow taking on the deep state or elites of nebulous origin, even though he himself has $20 billion in government contracts. So he’s not the elite. It’s unclear.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, I want to hone in on that point, actually. I wanted to underline this in red pen, and I know folks in the live chat are asking about it, and it’s on all of our minds, but definitely worth noting here. In rapid pace, I’m going to read some quotes from other outlets that make this point. The Lever reported this week, “Elon Musk’s [Department of] Government Efficiency was reportedly canceling Department of Education contracts in the name of frugality.” As that was happening, “Musk’s rocket company was [this week] cementing a NASA contract adding millions of dollars to its already massive deal with the space agency. […] The new ‘supplemental’ contract dated Feb. 10 adds $7.5 million to SpaceX’s NASA work, according to the Federal Procurement Data System records. The overall transaction obligated $38 million to Musk’s company, as part of its overall deal with NASA.”

This is to say nothing of Musk’s other companies like SpaceX, which, Reuters reports, “SpaceX provides launch services to the Department of Defense, including the launch of classified satellites and other payloads. SpaceX’s CEO Gwynne Shotwell has said the company has about $22 billion in government contracts.” But it’s also important to note that “The total value of Musk’s companies’ contracts with the DoD are estimated to be in the billions [of dollars],” but we don’t know because a lot of them are classified. But you could go through, again, the obvious, what should be the obvious conflicts of interest here, is Musk is going in there like a bull in a China shop, saying he’s rooting out corruption and waste while he’s still securing contracts for himself and his companies.

And the other story there that folks were talking about this morning was, as The New York Times and first the news site Drop Site reported, that apparently the State Department had plans to buy $400 million worth of armored Tesla Cybertrucks, which caused a massive uproar. As of right now on Thursday, Musk has denied those reports and is calling Drop Site fake news, doing the standard like, oh, I’ve never heard of this, that never happened thing, even though it was written on the State Department’s procurement forecast for the 2025 fiscal year, including $400 million of “armored Tesla cars”.

So there’s a whole lot more we could say about that. But Paris, I wanted to come to you because there was another quote that I came across that I think people should really recall right now, and this was a quote from Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, who said that DOGE is a “revolution”, one that will be “very good for Palantir in the long run”. And this was something that Alex Karp said on Palantir’s fourth quarter earnings call.

And so this brings us back to the question of, again, the Silicon Valley oligarchic network that birthed J.D. Vance’s political career, that threw ungodly sums of money behind the Trump and Vance ticket, that are embodied in the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, that were sitting there in the rotunda on Trump’s inauguration day. You had Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Musk all there.

I wanted to bring this back to you, Paris, because, could we describe this as a capitalist coup by the big tech oligarchy? Are they trying to essentially force society and the market to become more dependent on their version of AI? Are they trying to force us to become dependent on crypto even though no one fucking wants to? How do people navigate that question? Is it that concerted? Are they using not just Musk, but Trump and the whole administration, to effectively take over our system of government so that they rewire our whole society to fit their needs?

Paris Marx:  Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t think that’s a big surprise. I think that that has been a project that they have been engaged in for quite some time now. It’s just they have an enormous amount of power and wealth that they can use to further force this onto everybody. And it’s not that this kind of tech oligarchy is unique in that way. I think that if we look at the United States, we can see that powerful capitalist interests have always been very influential in shaping government policy and what the government has been doing, and also what the wider society looks like in order to benefit themselves and their industries.

My book that I wrote was about the transportation industry, certainly looking at what Silicon Valley has been doing recently, but also going back to the early days of automobility and where you see these auto companies and these various interests working together to ensure that communities in the United States become dependent on automobiles because it’s great for the oil business and it’s great for the auto business and so many of these other industries that are associated with it. As we develop this mode of suburban living that is very consumer oriented, there was a concerted effort to create a particular kind of society that was going to be very beneficial to a lot of capitalist interests.

And right now what we see is these capitalists in Silicon Valley making sure that they are trying to remake the United States in their interests, in the way that they want to see it, and it looks like it’s going to be a total mess because they don’t have a very good understanding of how society actually works. They think that because they can code, or even just understand code to a certain degree, that they understand everything, and that is not the case. They’re very narcissistic people.

But you mentioned Palantir and Alex Karp. I was listening to an interview with an executive at Palantir just the other day where they’re talking about how they think it’s very essential for the Department of Defense to increase competition in the development of arms and weapons, because not just does that take the defense primes, the major companies that currently provide weapons to the US government and the US military, down from their current pedestal, but also opens the way for Palantir, Anduril, for these other more tech-framed startup companies to get in on some of those Pentagon dollars.

That is one of the things that they are very focused on in that sector of the tech economy. And a lot of these major tech companies are also reorienting to sell more AI to also develop more defense products so that they can tap into all of this money that the United States spends on defense.

And of course, they will promote that as a savings because one of the things that they always point to is SpaceX, to say, look, SpaceX reduced the cost of launching, and now the United States has this much easier ability to get things into space. And when you note that the United States is becoming dependent on SpaceX in a way that actually has people really concerned, that’s not a worry to them because they just say, oh, well, other companies could compete on cost, but they’re not. So the problem isn’t with SpaceX, it’s with everyone else.

And that is something that we’re also seeing, as you mentioned NASA, is NASA is going to be a focus of Elon Musk and the DOGE agency. There were reports today that DOGE people are now going to NASA to look through the books, and the acting NASA administrator is welcoming them to do that. And it seems quite clear that they are going to seek to remake NASA around Elon Musk’s priorities and SpaceX’s priorities in particular, potentially even the cancellation of the space launch system, which Boeing, and I can’t remember the other company that’s working on that, but essentially to cancel that and to make sure that SpaceX is going to get more business out of it.

So everywhere you look, they are trying to remake things in order for them to benefit from it. David Sachs, who is the AI and crypto czar, says that stable coin legislation is their first big priority. So to try to legitimize the crypto industry and to make sure that it’s easier to roll out crypto and these products throughout the US economy and financial system, despite the fact that we saw how scam laden this whole industry is and how these venture capitalists benefited from it.

We have reporting that Marc Andreessen, despite the fact that he’s not very public facing, he does a lot of interviews and stuff, but he’s not out talking a lot about what he’s doing with the administration, but reportedly he also has a lot of influence in the policies that are being pushed forward.

So a lot of these tech billionaires are trying to make sure that the changes that the Trump administration is going to bring forward are going to be in their interests, and that the things that are going to make them money and increase their power are things that are going to be pushed forward in the next little while.

That is not a big surprise, but we need to be aware of those things if we’re going to be able to push back on them properly and try to ensure that the tech industry isn’t able to remake American society in the way that it would want to see it, regardless of what that means for everybody else. Because I can guarantee you that, just as people have been increasingly waking up to the harms that have come of this industry and these tech companies over the past few decades, despite the fact that they were long positioned as increasing democracy and freedom and convenience and all this stuff, that actually there are a whole load of issues that have come of the transformation of the economy with these digital services because these people don’t really care about average people or the consequences of what they do. They’re capitalists. They’re just trying to make their money and increase their power.

Adam Johnson:  That’s what makes this whole deep state framing so goofy. These are all defense contractors. Palantir was co-founded by the CIA through its In-Q-Tel fund in 2003. Peter Thiel was on their original board of directors the year before he put the first big money into Facebook. This is someone who’s deeply into the so-called deep state Pentagon contract, CIA. It’s all fucking a show. It’s all an act. This is this victimization link of the deep state’s after them, and it’s like, you are the fucking deep state. And this is what they want. They want control over the government.

And a lot of progressives have said, why has DOGE not gone after the Defense Department? And I think that’s a little bit of a trap because I think they will go after the Defense Department in a very particular way, in the same way Josh Hawley holds up DOD bills because he wants to rename bases after Confederate generals. I think they’ll go after it for anti-“DEI” stuff to go after trans people, Black people, they’ll do that. They’ll call it efficiency, but they’ll do the racist disciplining aspect. But they’ll also just get rid of defense contractors that aren’t them.

Again, they’ll put it under the auspices of modernization, AI, all this slick dogshit to make it seem like it’s, oh, they’re just streamlining things. But it’s because they want to pay back a lot of their buddies in Silicon Valley. And some of these companies they perceive as dinosaurs, whether it’s Boeing or Lockheed Martin or whatever, will probably lose out on contracts to some of their Silicon Valley. They have a ton of money in defense contractors.

So I think they’ll do that. And maybe that’ll shave off, at the end of the day, a couple billion. But ultimately it’s just a power grab. It’s got nothing to do with genuinely taking on the power of the deep state or power of the CIA or power of the Pentagon. These guys are not interested in that. They are interested in the raw exercise of American imperial power, just like every other capitalist. They want to do it their way. If anything, it’s maybe a civil war within the defense contracting world, but it’s not going to meaningfully push back on the Pentagon.

So when people like Ro Khanna, and to some extent even Bernie Sanders, they get all cute saying, why don’t you defend, go after the Defense Department? I’m like, man, be careful what you wish for, because what they’re going to do is they’re going to purge it of fucking Black people and give their contracts to their buddies. So again, because all this is just in bad faith, it’s got nothing to do with efficiency, obviously. Clearly, in case it wasn’t obvious [laughs].

Paris Marx:  No, I think the thing to always remember is you think about the history of Silicon Valley, and when we think of Silicon Valley today, we think of the internet companies and digital technology and all this stuff, but Lockheed Martin and missile manufacturers and all that stuff have always been there. They were where the first microprocessors went, to go into these missiles. This relationship has always been there, and we’re seeing it very much come to the fore at the moment.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Guys, this has been a phenomenal conversation, and I could genuinely talk to you for two more hours, but I know I’ve got to wrap up and let you go. And so by way of a final, not a question to answer right here, but just maybe looking ahead to the next stream when we can get you guys back on to talk about this, let’s not forget that the world does not stop and end with the United States.

What happens here is also going to depend on what technology from China and other parts of the world do. And we’ve been seeing that there are plenty of companies, governments, people around the world who are salivating at the chance to make American capitalists and America itself pay the price for all of our bullshit in past years, decades, and centuries.

So I wanted to ask if you had any leading thoughts for things that people should keep an eye on when they’re also trying to get a handle on this subject? What outside of the US, particularly when it comes to China, should we also be factoring in here?

So let’s make that a final note. And also tell folks where they can find you and take advantage of your brilliant work after we close out this stream.

So yeah, Paris, let’s go back to you, and then Adam, we’ll close out with you.

Paris Marx:  Sounds good. Yeah, absolutely. China is the big competitor at the moment when it comes to technology because it has been able to actually develop a proper industry because it’s protected a lot of its companies, so it was able to do that. We recently saw the AI market get this big scare when a Chinese company called DeepSeek developed a more efficient generative AI model that had all these very energy intensive American companies running and getting nervous. I don’t think it’s ultimately going to change a whole lot.

But I would also say in this moment where you have Trump flexing the power of the American government and making it so that the exercise of American power is very short term and very transactional, that you have a lot of countries that were previously aligned with the United States that are still aligned with the United States getting more and more pissed off, I would say, with the US and the American government. I’m in Canada, so obviously I’m thinking about that a lot these days as we hear about major tariffs being put on Canada and Mexico and talk of Canada being a 51st state.

But you also hear what Donald Trump has been saying about Panama, about South Africa, about different parts of Europe, Greenland, Denmark, not to mention his new plan to take over Gaza, apparently, and turn it into a wonderful resort or something.

As the United States says more of these things and turns off countries that have been its allies, I think that there’s also an opening there, as we see the relationship between the Trump administration and Silicon Valley and these tech billionaires, for other countries to come together and to say, not just fuck the United States, but fuck Silicon Valley as well. And we can develop our own technologies to compete against this and increasingly try to reduce our dependence on American digital technology and these tech companies that we were told we had to be dependent on because of this moment and how the internet was supposed to work in this new neoliberal era that increased American power.

So I guess maybe it’s more of a hope. We see the Europeans getting increasingly frustrated. I know Canada is very frustrated, and I’m sure a number of other countries are as well. And I hope that that becomes actually some sort of a broader movement, for these countries to try something different rather than just keep being dependent on the United States. But we’ll see where that ultimately goes. I think China right now is obviously the one to watch in this area, but I hope it will expand beyond that as people get fed up with the US.

And on that, of course, Tech Won’t Save Us podcast is where I am most of the time. Usually I tweet or post on Bluesky these days. And I also have a newsletter called Disconnect.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Which everyone should subscribe to. And I can’t stress enough, go listen to Tech Won’t Save Us. You’ll learn a lot that you’re going to need right now to understand what the hell is happening.

Adam, let’s close out with you. Any final thoughts on that? And where can folks find you?

Adam Johnson:  This is, again, this is an example. What is fascism? It’s imperialism turned inwards. I think they are so high on their own ideological supply. They’re getting so greedy, they don’t understand that the liberal state, such as it is, all these DEI programs — The actual ones, not the racist canard — This is all to preserve capitalism. It’s an HR device. They’re trying to help you.

But Musk and these right-wing oligarchs, they’re so in their own world, they truly have developed what Cass Sunstein refers to pejoratively as a crippling epistemology. They’re so warped in their mind. It’s like going after USAID. It’s a soft power. It’s a regime change [laughs] like [inaudible]. Yeah, it does important work, but that’s not really why it’s there.

And I think that this level of myopia, I think we’re seeing this play out, and they’re so used to just consuming and consuming and consuming that they will let the world burn if it can get them an extra 5%. The smart billionaires, the ones who don’t really see much difference between $100 billion and $150 billion, who understand that, who donate to Democrats, who understand that they’re a fundamentally conservative force, are just losing the day. And they’re not really, they don’t have that much skin in the game, and they just will keep consuming and consuming until there’s nothing left to consume.

Even if, again, they blow up the very — It’s like when they talk about AI. The way they talk, you would think they don’t need consumers or people. It’s humanity without humans. It’s a very dark vision of the world. And Musk really does exemplify this. He is the epitome of this. He views everyone as an NPC. He’s the main actor. People either work for him or they’re in his way.

And this is a general pathology in Silicon Valley. It, again, it’s not everybody, but it’s a lot of ’em. This kind of Randian dark vision of the world of dog eat dog. And they don’t understand that savvy capitalists know how to adapt and throw the little piggy some slop, and they don’t even want to do that. So I think they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction in certain ways. And the question is, what force will emerge to counterbalance that dark vision? And right now, I don’t see that happening.

Maximillian Alvarez:  But I think the question itself is one we all need to sit with because we need to be the authors of that counter story. What is it? How are we telling it? How are we fighting to make it a reality? That is our task, but we know the story that these oligarchs want to tell and the role that they want us, as minor characters and cannon fodder, to play in their story.

And so we want to end on that note, as a call to action to all of us. What is the story that we are telling to counteract this technofascist takeover that ends with the potential destruction of civilization as such, the planet that we live on, if not checked. What is the check? What are we prepared to do? What are we going to do to fight for a better future that’s still worth living in for ourselves and our children? We need to answer that question in a hurry.

And I really cannot thank enough all of our incredible guests today on the stream: the great Aaron Stephens, Paris Marx, and Adam Johnson, who have contributed to making this a phenomenal conversation. I hope that you all learned as much from it as I did.

Please give us your feedback in the live chat. Reach out to us over email. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Become a donor and a community member today, because your support directly translates to us getting to do more shows like this, doing more weekly reporting on workers in the labor movement, on the people victimized by the prison-industrial complex, people victimized by the police, and this gross system of inequality and endless war. We are on the front lines holding a microphone to the folks who are fighting the fight there in the middle of the struggle.

And so we can’t do that work without you and your support. So please let us know how we’re doing. Please let us know what you’d like us to address on future livestreams, and other guests that you want us to have on.

But we do these streams for you. We do them to hopefully empower you and others to act in this moment, because if we don’t act and we let this all happen, we are headed towards a very, very dark place. We’re in a dark place right now, but things can still always get darker. So please fight however you can for the light, and hold it up, and we’ll be right there with you.

For The Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez thanking you for the whole team here, everyone behind the scenes who is making this stream happen. We are with you, and we thank you for watching, and we thank you for caring. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

[Outro] Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The second day of confirmation hearings for Trump’s secretary of health and human services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. again focused on his long record of vaccine skepticism, his shifting position on abortion and his professional inexperience in public health. Kennedy was questioned about his role in a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019. Dr. Alec Ekeroma, the director general of Samoa’s Health Ministry, says Kennedy promoted anti-vaccine misinformation in the country, leading to the deaths of 83 people, the majority of whom were young children. “He is the preeminent anti-vax campaigner in the world,” adds investigative journalist Brian Deer, who has been following the anti-vaccine movement for years. Kennedy has “no medical or scientific qualifications at all.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Following this incident, a flurry of different types of videos and claims are being widely circulated on social media. In one such video, a group of men can be seen raising slogans in support of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. Sharing this video, it is being claimed that these men caused the stampede at the Kumbh Mela in which many people lost their lives.

A collage of two video clips is also being shared in which one side features a report by The Lallantop. In this, a person is claiming that a bus had stopped here with 15 to 20 youths getting down from it, which caused the stampede. The second video shows footage of a group of youths shouting slogans of ‘Long live Akhilesh Yadav’. It is being claimed that these boys triggered the stampede.

An X user named Ocean Jain shared this video and wrote, “If eyewitnesses are to be believed, some people got down from a bus and caused a stampede. And you can see in the second video how they are shouting ‘Akhilesh Yadav’ as if they have come to a rally. Was this video taken before the stampede? The police and administration should investigate from this angle.” It is worth noting that this user has been found spreading misinformation earlier as well.

चश्मदीदों की माने तो कुछ लोग एक बस से उतरे और भगदड़ मचाए

और आप दूसरी वीडियो देख सकते है कैसे अखिलेश यादव चिल्ला रहे है जैसे किसी रैली में आए हो

कहीं यह वीडियो भगदड़ वाली स्थिति के पहले का तो नहीं है??

पुलिस ओर प्रशासन को इस एंगल से जांच करनी चाहिए pic.twitter.com/asS8eOlIIg

— ocean jain (@ocjain4) January 30, 2025

BJP supporter Raushan Sinha shared the video and wrote that the Uttar Pradesh government should investigate whether these young men were the reason behind the stampede. (Archived link)

BJP supporter Rajiv Bhatia (@Ra_Bies) tweeted this video and called it a shocking incident and slammed Akhilesh Yadav. (Archived link)

BJP supporter Nitin Shukla also shared the video and made a similar claim. (Archived link)

Fact Check

We performed a reverse image search using frames taken from the viral footage and found the source video uploaded on Instagram by a user named Pradeep Yadav with over 1.57 lakh views. We reached out to Yadav, who told us that he had recorded the video on January 27 at 5 am.

He also shared with us a screenshot of the metadata details from the phone that was used to record the viral video. It can be seen below that the video was captured at 5:25 am on January 27.

In addition, Pradeep told us that his friend Virendra Yadav is also seen in the video. Virendra also posted the video on his social media accounts on January 27. Pradeep shared with us the link to the video posted by Virendra on Facebook and Instagram. It can be clearly seen that this video was posted on January 27. In other words, the video was posted on social media two days before the stampede, which occurred on the morning of January 29. Therefore, the claim that these youths caused the stampede is false.

To sum up, many BJP supporters shared a video of some men raising slogans of ‘Long live Akhilesh Yadav’ at the Maha Kumbh Mela and falsely claimed that these men caused the stampede which led to the death of many people. However, in reality, this video was posted online two days before the incident.

The post Viral video of men raising pro-Akhilesh slogans at Maha Mukbh was shot 2 days before stampede appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

The South Korean military said it detected the launch, the North’s second missile test this year, from the Ganggye area in the North’s Jagang province, the news agency reported, citing the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS.

The missiles flew up to 250 kilometers (155 miles) before falling into the sea, Reuters cited the South Korean military as saying.

“In preparation against additional launches, our military has strengthened our monitoring and vigilance, while closely sharing information on the North Korean missile with the U.S. and Japanese sides and maintaining a full readiness posture,” the JCS said.

On Jan. 6, North Korea tested a suspected mid-range ballistic missile as out-going U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the South Korean capital for talks.

Addressing North Korea’s development of missiles and nuclear weapons in violation of U.N. resolutions, and its hostility towards the United States and its allies including South Korea, is a top priority for all U.S. administrations.

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Blinken, in his talks in Seoul with Acting President Choi Sang-mok, last week stressed an “unwavering” U.S. security commitment to South Korea and said their alliance remained “more essential than ever.”

Choi denounced the latest test, saying it was a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, Yonghap reported. He vowed a strong response based on his country’s alliance with the U.S.

Trump, who will take office on Monday, spearheaded an unprecedented diplomatic push on North Korea during his first term as president, meeting leader Kim Jong Un three times but making no progress on efforts to get him to abandon his nuclear and missile programs.

Trump raised his engagement with North Korea during his election campaign suggesting he might have an eye on reviving the effort.

Edited by Mike Firn

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

But the claim is false. The video in fact has been shared online as early as September, months before the deadly plane crash.

The video was shared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, on Dec. 31, as well as on Weibo. The Weibo post has been taken down.

“179 people on the Korean plane were killed, the worst airplane disaster in South Korea. The last few minutes before the plane exploded,” the caption of the video reads.

The clip appears to have been filmed inside a plane, with oxygen masks falling from above passenger seats. Several passengers are seen holding their mobile phones and filming, and some passengers appear to be chanting.

(Douyin and Weibo)

The video and the claim began to circulate after the Jeju Air flight carrying 181 people crashed in a ball of flames as it was attempting to land in the South Korean city of Muan on Dec. 29, killing all but two of those on board in one of the country’s worst ever air disasters.

But the claim is false.

Old video

A reverse image search found the video had been shared online as early as September, months before the deadly plane crash, as seen here and here.

Russian state media Sputnik’s Arabic edition reported in September that the footage showed the scene of an Air Algerie flight to Istanbul returning an hour after takeoff due to a technical fault, causing panic among the passengers on board. The Air Algerie plane landed safely.

Clues in the clip

A closer examination of the video reveals that the crew members are dressed in blue uniforms, and the seats are also blue, which is not consistent with Jeju Air’s signature white and orange color scheme.

Additionally, passengers can be heard chanting in the video, but the language they are using is not Korean. According to South Korean and Thai authorities, among the 181 passengers aboard the crashed Jeju Air flight, two were Thai nationals, while the rest were Korean.

A Korean-speaking journalist from AFCL also confirmed that the chanting in the video is unrecognizable and was not in the Korean language.

Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Faced with the daunting task of reclaiming neighborhoods, beachfront properties and areas around mosques, repairs began quickly in sections of Indonesia and Thailand devastated by the deadly Dec. 26, 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

A 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck in waters off Sumatra, generating a giant tsunami where waves topped over 160 feet (48.7 meters) in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

After the waters finally calmed down, the death toll globally climbed to about 230,000, including about 167,000 in Aceh, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which estimated damage at U.S. $13 billion.

Within a few years, life returned to a semblance of normal because of efforts to reclaim and rebuild what was lost in the two countries hit hard by the wall of water. In many places, few signs of the destruction are visible in 2024.

Those efforts are captured in a series of before-and-after photos:

(Philippe Desmazes & Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP)

(Bay Ismoyo & Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP)

(Manan Vatsyayana & Ali Ozluer/AFP)

(Romeo Gacad & Manan Vatsyayana/AFP)

(Bay Ismoyo & Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP)

(Saeed Khan & Christophe Archambault/AFP)

(AFP)

(Agus & Jewel Samad/AFP)

See a version of this gallery on BenarNews — an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by BenarNews staff.

Satellite data from the Earth imaging company Planet Labs and analyzed by Radio Free Asia show that the two Chinese Type 056 missile corvettes, believed to be Aba (hull number 630) and Tianmen (hull number 631), were away from the new China-developed pier at Ream for four days between Dec. 18-21.

Before that, they were also absent for four days between Nov. 25-28, and Sept. 26-29.

Corvettes are small warships with displacement under 2,000 tons and often used for patrol.

“They typically do four to five day operations, but usually four, most surface surveillance and anti-submarine warfare sweeps,” said Carl Schuster, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

The Chinese ships’ absence from port “makes perfect sense,” according to Schuster, as the Cambodian military confirmed that Beijing would transfer two corvettes to Cambodia and train its personnel on how to operate them.

The Chinese navy has been training Cambodian naval personnel since December last year, when two vessels of the same class arrived in Ream for the first time, but the drills were carried out mostly at port before this current phase.

“Typical training activities with the Cambodians would be basic tactical maneuvering drills, weapons skills, signal drills and underway replenishment or material transfer drills,” said Schuster.

“These primarily are basic seamanship, technical proficiency, and naval formation, maneuvering and response drills, which also benefit the corvette crews training,” he added.

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On Dec. 20, when the Chinese ships were in the open sea, Cambodian and Vietnamese navies conducted a joint patrol along their “historical maritime border” but it is unclear whether the corvettes had any role in the exercise.

Sources told RFA that China was expected soon to hand over new facilities at the base, together with the pier and two warships, but the plan seems to be encountering delays, which are not unexpected in large military infrastructure projects.

Japanese access

Once the construction is completed, Cambodia will grant Japan access, veteran Cambodian leader Hun Sen told visiting Japanese national security chief Takeo Akiba in Phnom Penh last week.

Hun Sen said in a Facebook post that Japanese ships would be the first to be invited to the Ream naval base, which has been off-limits to foreign vessels, apart from the Chinese ones.

(Japan Maritime Self-defense Force)

The U.S. Navy’s USS Savannah was in Cambodia last week on a ties-mending trip but had to dock at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away, due to “ongoing construction and safety concerns” at Ream – the usual explanation provided by Cambodia.

A senior U.S. defense official told RFA that there are concerns “about the precedent of China establishing bases overseas” with Ream, even if the base is unlikely to boost China’s capabilities in the disputed South China Sea greatly.

The U.S. has long been concerned with the lack of transparency in the China-funded project.

(U.S. Indo-Pacific Command)

Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo, during his brief visit to Cambodia on Dec. 18, reaffirmed U.S. respect for Cambodia’s sovereignty, including in its fostering of a relationship with China.

“We are taking a wait and see attitude towards the PRC’s relationship at the Ream naval base,” Paparo told a press briefing, referring to China by its official name, the People’s Republic of China.

“We’re not here to counter any other actor,” Paparo added.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

• Government funding agreement in Congress collapses as Trump makes new demands before shutdown.
• Supreme Court will step into debate over legality of potential US ban of Tiktok.
• Federal Reserve announces latest quarter point interest rate cut.
• GOP lawmakers announce border security plan for Trump Administration.
• LA Immigrants rights advocates march in celebration of immigrants.
• Richmond approves housing inspection ordinance.
• San Mateo County Supervisors vote to move forward on removing County Sheriff.
• Anti abortion activists testify in Congress against law banning blocking of abortion clinic entrances.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 18, 2024 Government funding agreement in Congress collapses as Trump makes new demands before shutdown. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Now the office, which offers financing to clean energy technologies that struggle to borrow from banks and received a huge boost of money from the Inflation Reduction Act, is rushing to do just that before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. The incoming president, flanked by Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, is expected to target unspent funds under the IRA, including LPO programs — putting at risk billions of loan dollars yet to be granted or finalized.

With Inauguration Day looming, the office has increased its activity in recent weeks. Since last Monday alone, the LPO announced four new conditional commitments for loans and loan guarantees and finalized a pending offer.

On Tuesday, long-duration energy storage company Eos closed a $303.5 million DOE loan guarantee to help it scale production. The day before, the DOE stated it planned to lend up to $7.5 billion to finance two electric vehicle battery manufacturing plants in Kokomo, Indiana. And one week earlier, the agency announced a conditional loan guarantee of nearly $5 billion to finance Grain Belt Express Phase 1, an interregional transmission line that will run between Ford County, Kansas, and Callaway County, Missouri.

Last Monday, the agency also announced conditional commitments for a direct loan of $6.6 billion to Rivian to build an EV manufacturing plant in Stanton Springs North, Georgia, and a loan guarantee of $290 million to Sunwealth to deploy up to 1,000 solar PV systems and battery energy storage systems across 27 states.

Read Next

The Department of Energy wants to pay companies to make greener solar panels

Maddie Stone

Under the Biden administration, LPO has so far doled out just under $55 billion in funding across 32 deals for battery and EV manufacturing, nuclear reactors, ​“clean” hydrogen facilities, virtual power plants, and critical minerals projects. The majority of the LPO’s investments have gone to Republican districts, according to a Politico analysis.

Most of the financing deals LPO has announced — about $41 billion worth — remain conditional, meaning the loans or loan guarantees are not yet finalized and depend on the companies meeting certain benchmarks.

Legal experts say that while the LPO’s 14 closed loans, which total more than $13 billion in investments, should remain safe from Republican backlash, delaying or undoing conditional funds could be much easier. ​“Immediately following inauguration of the new president, there is likely to be a period of inaction on financial assistance awards that are in negotiation and on announced funding opportunities,” wrote Hogan Lovells attorney, Mary Anne Sullivan.

A Republican-majority Congress could potentially roll back not-yet-obligated funding in order to help offset the costs of a likely extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are estimated to add $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

As of November 30, the office had 212 outstanding applications with a total of $324 billion in loans requested. In November, LPO raised its estimated remaining loan authority to nearly $400 billion.

The LPO was created in 2005 to support innovative clean energy projects — or in Shah’s words, to ​“build a bridge to bankability” for technologies that haven’t yet reached the at-scale deployment needed to attract commercial lenders. The Inflation Reduction Act supercharged the office’s lending authority, taking it from $40 billion to more than $400 billion.

Read Next

The Department of Energy promised this tribal nation a $32 million solar grant. It’s nearly impossible to access.

Tony Schick, Oregon Public Broadcasting

It’s unclear what will end up happening to the loan program with a Republican trifecta in office. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next Republican president, proposes eliminating the LPO altogether. Billionaires Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who have been tasked by Trump to lead a new task force called the Department of Government Efficiency, may also target the office in their sweeping proposals to slash federal programs and personnel. (Musk’s EV company, Tesla, received a $465 million loan from the office in 2010.)

Other lawmakers have suggested that the LPO could be reformed to finance more energy sources favored by Republicans and Trump’s pick for Energy secretary, fracking company CEO Chris Wright, such as nuclear and geothermal. ​“The LPO needs to have all energy, if we go forward with it at all,” Representative Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky, told Politico’s E&E News.

DOE officials noted that local economic growth and jobs could be jeopardized should LPO investments be curtailed.

“There is steel in the ground and job openings at new or expanded facilities around the country,” a DOE spokesperson said in a statement. ​“It would be irresponsible for any government to turn its back on private sector partners, states, and communities that are benefiting from lower energy costs and new economic opportunities spurred by LPO’s investments.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s Energy Department races to get cleantech money out before Trump takes office on Dec 8, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Akielly Hu.

We continue our conversation with Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien, who has written to President Joe Biden urging him for a number of policy changes before he leaves office in January. O’Brien’s letter calls for Biden to stop arms transfers to Israel and use U.S. leverage to end the war in Gaza; transfer detainees out of the Guantánamo Bay military prison and close the facility; commute the death sentences of people on federal and military death row; and restore asylum rights, which the administration severely curtailed this year. “He could do so much more,” O’Brien says of Biden’s last weeks in office.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

With just weeks left in President Joe Biden’s term, we speak with Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien, who has written to the outgoing president urging him to “change course on critical human rights” before the end of his term in office. One of his key demands is for Biden to free Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who has been imprisoned for decades and repeatedly denied parole. Peltier recently turned 80 and has always maintained his innocence for the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His conviction was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct. “It’s time to give him a chance to spend his last days with his family and with his community,” says O’Brien. “He’s been incarcerated as long as Joe Biden has been in national politics.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The decision is a new blow to press freedom in Guatemala. Zamora, president of the now defunct elPeriódico newspaper, had already spent 813 days in jail and experienced years of government harassment after his reporting challenged the country’s political elite. 

Zamora was sentenced to six years imprisonment in June 2023 on money laundering charges, which were widely criticized as politically motivated. An appeals court overturned his conviction in October 2023; the retrial has been delayed by ongoing procedural hurdles.

CPJ has repeatedly urged the Guatemalan government, especially President Bernardo Arévalo, to end Zamora’s prosecution and the harassment of his family and the journalistic community. 

In an interview with CPJ before the overturning of his house arrest, Zamora discussed the personal toll of these charges, his unyielding commitment to press freedom, and the growing threats faced by journalists in Guatemala’s increasingly repressive environment.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is it like to return home after more than 800 days in prison?

Returning home has been an experience full of intense emotions and unexpected moments. When I arrived home, my friends who had supported me throughout the entire process came with me to my house — 10 people who, during my imprisonment, brought me food and visited me once a week. After spending the night with them, I only slept for a few hours. 

When I woke up, I found out that the directors of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), who were gathered in Córdoba, Argentina, wanted to speak with me. And from there, calls and interviews began, one after another.

Diplomats and media from all over the world want to speak with me, and when I go for my daily walk — about 10 kilometers [6.2 miles] a day — people stop to greet me, take photos, and offer their support. 

I appreciate the affection, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I wasn’t prepared for so much attention. I’m a shy person; I feel more comfortable writing than speaking in public, and this has been a big change. I also have health issues that I need to attend to, but I am here, trying to adapt.

I’m prepared, knowing they could come to take me back at any moment. And I’m ready here for when they come, to go back again. And I will come out again, and the time will come when they have to let me go free. 

How was your experience in the Mariscal Zavala prison, located at a military base in northern Guatemala City? 

Mariscal Zavala was a shock. They took me [in July 2022], with 18 armed men, and put me in a cell without any explanation.

I spent 14 days without sleep, with purple lights, and unable to communicate with my lawyers. During that time, they put insects in my cell that left wounds on my arms and legs. I also got poisoned by an insecticide that I managed to obtain to control the pests. Despite all this, my conditions improved when the new government changed: I was given better conditions, with light, heating, and more dignity.

The prosecutor’s office says it does not pursue you as a journalist but as a business owner. How do you respond to these statements?

For me, it is hard to conceive that José Rubén Zamora is not a journalist, as I have dedicated my entire life to this profession. They persecuted me and tried to imprison me just for doing my job. And when you add that they were seeking sentences for up to 20 years — the same maximum sentence given for crimes like money laundering or extortion — and they show as evidence my opinion columns, the argument that they are after me as a businessman loses all credibility.

Who is behind this, and why are they pursuing you?

What we’ve lived through in Guatemala has been a sinister metamorphosis of our democracy. Every four years, we elect a president who, rather than being a legitimate leader, is a thief, and he governs with the support of high-ranking military structures, organized crime, and monopolies. They’ve always been bothered by the fact that our newspaper did not align with their interests, that we were independent and denounced corruption and drug trafficking, which are part of that system.

Since 2007, a criminal structure has consolidated its power. It’s a web of interests that has taken over the country and is indifferent to the people’s problems. This is a power alliance that, although it has succeeded in persecuting me, has paid a high price. I think it would have been better for them if I had continued with my newspaper because, in the end, exposing their corruption was less damaging than my imprisonment.

​​This is not the first time you’ve found yourself in a dangerous situation because of your reporting. How has this affected you and your family?

My children never gave up. Despite the damage to their lives, they were always relentless. They worked tirelessly for my liberation and didn’t feel ashamed. The youngest one aimed to be an academic, was building a solid career and had to leave with her mother because they were after him. They even sent people to arrest him, but they were able to leave the country first. Now, he’s without a job, without documents, and his future is uncertain. It has been very tough for them and me, but they keep moving forward with strength.

In 2023, the Court of Appeals annulled your sentence on money laundering charges. What does this mean for you legally and personally?

I still don’t know the final impact. I have requested that we return to the hearing for the presentation of evidence, and I hope to present the testimonies of experts and the person who made the transaction with me. Additionally, I trust that the case regarding the travel receipts and the obstruction charge, which I consider ridiculous, will be dismissed at the intermediate hearing. The case has been intentionally delayed, but sooner or later, it will have to be resolved. If that happens, it will allow my wife to return.

What is the current status of the legal cases you are facing?

The trial that will be repeated is the most important, and I hope to present my evidence at that time. For this, the first hearing for the charges of money laundering and extortion is scheduled for September 25, 2025; there, they will set up a second hearing, likely in 2026. The case has no foundation, as the prosecutor’s office is setting up an extortion case, but they have no people to testify against either for that or for money laundering.

At one point, I was offered the possibility of going home if I accepted the charges and apologized to [former president Alejandro] Giammattei, his associate Miguel Martínez, and the press for my “immoralities.” When I refused, they began to create a second case to persecute my wife and my young son with charges of document falsification. The prosecutor’s office claims the signatures were fake, but those travel documents were legally issued by immigration.

Also, all of this happened in a unilateral hearing where I was not informed of the charges nor allowed to defend myself. This case has no evidence, but what the prosecutor’s office does is that every time there is a hearing, the judge is denounced, and the prosecutors do not show up, which leaves the case stalled.

What has the freezing of your accounts and seizure of all assets meant for you? How did the closure of the newspaper impact you?

It was devastating. Before the pandemic, I had no debts, but now I have obligations with the banks that I can’t even cover since my accounts have been frozen for two years. It’s a constant pressure.

Now elPeriódico is closed. How did you experience that process?

It was a solitary process. I witnessed the collapse of everything without being able to do anything. 

I came to believe that no matter who defended me — whether the best lawyer in the world or someone without experience — the result was going to be the same. That acceptance gave me a deep sense of serenity because I understood that I no longer had control over anything. It was a moment where I decided to just go with the flow, let myself be carried by the current, and I even thought that I might spend the rest of my life in prison. 

If it weren’t for organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), who not only helped me get out but also gave me solidarity and support I never expected, I don’t know how I would have been able to continue.

What impact do you think elPeriódico’s closure had on Guatemala and its press?

Guatemala lost one of its most belligerent and irreverent voices. Although the country still has several media outlets, our newspaper stood out for being against abuses of power, state terrorism, impunity, and corruption. We fought for democracy, freedom, and equality of opportunities. We were probably the most uncomfortable and bothersome media for the powerful. 

Despite being small, we knew that we caused significant moral damage to the country’s big thieves, which gave us great satisfaction.

How do you view the current press freedom situation in Guatemala, especially in relation to the journalists who investigate and publish the abuses of power under this government, compared to the previous one?

This president is an exception. He is a decent man, but he lacks control over Congress and the judicial system. The prosecutor’s office is also going after him, and I am sure they will try to remove his immunity to subject him to a legal process.

It’s encouraging to see that many journalists are still working and haven’t given up, even though they face constant risks. The fight for freedom is not philosophical; it is existential. It’s a daily conquest that is achieved by rejecting the abuses of the established power.

Looking ahead, do you see yourself continuing in journalism?

I would like to continue in journalism, but my lawyers have advised me to be cautious. They imprisoned me for two reasons: for traveling too much and because I can influence the media. That’s why, until at least the next two years pass, I must avoid speaking publicly, although it is very difficult for me to stay silent. 

Despite everything, I will always keep fighting. We must maintain our patience, courage, and faith without losing hope. It’s essential to develop the ability to overcome our fears and, whenever possible, break barriers. 

In the end, freedom is the fundamental pillar of democracy.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Dánae Vílchez.

Top U.N. officials are again warning that the entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is “at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” At least 1,800 Palestinians have been killed, many of them children, since October, when Israel imposed a draconian siege and began an intensified campaign of ethnic cleansing on northern Gaza. Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council recently spent several days in Gaza. He describes what he saw as “devastation beyond belief,” as Palestinians face “the most intense and most indiscriminate bombardment anywhere in the world in recent memory,” coupled with the utter depletion of aid. Egeland pleads for the United States, the largest supplier of military funding and equipment to Israel, to condition its weapons to Israel, enforce the provision of aid and commit to ending Israel’s assault. “It’s not in Israel’s interest to destroy its neighborhood in Gaza and in Lebanon. It will create new generations of hatred,” Egeland says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The vision

“For so long, we’ve assumed that when the climate crisis got bad enough, everybody would just wake up, come together, and solve it in some grand ‘kumbaya’ moment — and that’s not necessarily how the story will go. When crises get worse and scarcity gets worse, sometimes it gets harder to love your neighbor. And there is no doubt in my mind that the empathy and respect we will need for our fellow citizens in order to address the climate crisis can only exist in a healthy democracy.”

— Nathaniel Stinnett, executive director of the Environmental Voter Project

The spotlight

Climate change poses a threat to democracy. That threat has manifested in some immediate ways this year, with freakishly strong hurricanes ripping through the southeastern U.S., damaging roads and polling places and interrupting mail service. Researchers have also found that the impacts of climate change could provide fertile ground for authoritarianism.

On the flipside, participating in democracy is crucial for ambitious climate policy. You’ve almost certainly heard it before: One of the single most important things you can do to make your voice heard and stand up for the issues you care about is vote.

“I think it is worth stressing that we have an absurdly large number of solutions to all of the climate problems we are faced with,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, the executive director of the Environmental Voter Project. “We just have politicians who don’t want to enact those solutions — and that lack of political will to force politicians to lead on climate is a real problem.”

He founded the Environmental Voter Project to address that problem, by identifying environmentalists who don’t vote and using behavioral science to try and turn them into more consistent voters — creating a stronger voting bloc for the climate. “At the end of the day, politicians always go where the votes are because they love winning elections,” Stinnett said. “That, more than any other reason you can come up with, is why anybody who cares about climate change needs to show up and vote, because it’s power just sitting there waiting for us to grab it.”

The organization is driven by data — and it’s already seeing some promising results for 2024. According to a press release shared on Monday, over 214,000 first-time climate voters have already cast ballots in the U.S. presidential election, across the 19 states the organization works in. And in some key swing states, climate-identified voters generally seem to be outperforming other early voters. In Pennsylvania, for instance, 12.8 percent of registered voters had already cast ballots, and 21.7 percent of climate voters had, Stinnett told me when we spoke last week.

Still, participating in democracy remains easier for some than others. Voter suppression is alive and well in 2024, as some groups, fueled by the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, are ramping up efforts to purge voter rolls, among other tactics. And those efforts hurt the climate movement.

“Laws have been put in place that are designed to make it harder for young people and people of color to vote,” Stinnett said. “And this has been historically the case — there’s nothing shocking or new about this — but we continue to see in our data that young people and people of color are the heart of the modern environmental movement. And so these laws disproportionately impact the climate and environmental movements.”

The pernicious thing about voter suppression, he said, is that it seeps into cultural consciousness. When people believe that voting is complicated — or when they are aware that it is, in fact, more difficult for them than for others — they may simply opt out.

The Environmental Voter Project is one organization working to combat this, by sharing information to demystify the process and helping people make a plan to vote.

You, too, can help make it easier for more people to cast their votes — in some low-key (and even fun!) ways. If you’re feeling an ever-increasing sense of anxiety and dread in these waning days before the 2024 election (hi! same!), getting involved may be one way to quell those feelings. Read on for five ways you can help get out the vote.

Making calls and knocking on doors

Environmental Voter Project has opportunities for volunteers looking to make calls to voters, specifically targeted to non-active voters who list the environment as their top concern. “Just over the last five days of the election, so November 1 through November 5, we’re looking to fill 4,825 phone-banking shifts,” Stinnett said. Modern phone-banking technology enables volunteers to do this from a computer, using a system that automatically dials the target numbers and shows the calls as coming from the organization, shielding the individual volunteer’s phone number. Find out more here.

The organization also has canvassing opportunities for environmental voters in Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Austin, Texas; and Tucson, Arizona. If you’re in any of those cities and interested in going door-to-door to get out the vote, you can sign up here.

Lead Locally is another organization working to rally the environmental vote, by focusing on building support for down-ballot candidates with strong climate platforms. It has two more “Calls for Climate” events before election day — one is today, October 30, and another is Monday, election eve. You can learn more and sign up here.

Offering rides to the polls

Do you have an electric car? And do you live in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, or Wisconsin? If so, you can volunteer to give people rides to the polls with ChargeTheVote, a nonpartisan initiative to boost voter turnout and slash transportation emissions on Election Day. Learn more here.

If you don’t drive an EV, there are still ways to help out with transportation. Look for groups in your area — for instance, Drive Your Ballot is one nonprofit operating in Pennsylvania, coordinating volunteer drivers as well as volunteers who can help organize ride dispatches. Check it out here.

And you can always take a more personal approach, too: Plan a voting carpool with friends, family, coworkers, etc. Studies have shown that something as simple as making a plan with someone can increase the likelihood that a person will follow through on their intention of voting.

Getting free food to voters in long lines

Beyond simply getting there, a long line at the polls can be a formidable barrier for many — and, historically, voters in Black and brown neighborhoods face longer wait times on Election Day. Having access to food and water can help ease some of the burden of having to wait. Pizza to the Polls coordinates pizza deliveries (it also has a food truck program) to places where there are long lines. Anyone can report a crowded polling location online and then help coordinate the pizza delivery. There’s also an option to preorder, for nonprofits and other groups planning events for voter registration and turnout.

Do keep in mind that every state has some form of restrictions on the activities that can take place near voting locations, and for some, that extends to offering sustenance (sometimes known as “line warming.”) For instance, in Georgia, it’s illegal to offer free food or water within 150 feet of a polling place. Still, local groups are finding ways around these restrictions.

Supporting a voting holiday

What about the bigger picture, you might ask? There are, of course, many ways that states and the national government could make it easier for people to vote. One idea is to make Election Day a federal holiday, so that working people would be able to make it to the polls more easily.

If you like that idea, and if you’re the sort of person who calls up your representative in Congress (or if you’re even curious about calling up your representative in Congress) you could do so to express support for the Election Day Holiday Act, a bill introduced by California Representative Anna Eshoo this year.

Talking, texting, and posting about it

If you’ve made it this far in the newsletter, you probably care at least a little bit about voting, and ensuring that others are able and motivated to vote, too. A final, very simple action you can take to encourage those around you to vote is to let them know that you have.

“Often the best thing you can do is be loud and proud about the fact that you are a climate voter,” Stinnett said. “We think it’s so satisfying when we can rationally convince people to do things. But the truth is we’re more social animals than we are rational animals.”

He cited a 2012 study published in Nature, which found Facebook users were more likely to vote when they received a message about voting that included profile pictures of their friends who had already voted. It may sound silly, Stinnett said, but human beings are constantly looking at one another to figure out what behavior is good and appropriate. Don’t waste time (and emotional labor) trying to craft the perfect argument to convince somebody to vote, he said. “If you, on social media or in real life, make it very clear that you are a voter because that’s integral to who you are as an environmentalist, or as a good neighbor, or as a good child, or as a good parent, then anybody else who wants to be those things will say, ‘Oh, I wanna be a good environmentalist, so I should vote, too.’”

— Claire Elise Thompson

A parting shot

In the spirit of being a loud and proud voter, here is a picture of me (and my dog) dropping off my own ballot yesterday in Seattle! I did it! As is the way in Washington state, the ballot showed up in my mailbox a couple weeks ago, and the drop box was a mere 15-minute walk from my house. (I also could have put it in the mail, with no postage required.)

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Parting shot: Claire Elise Thompson / Grist

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 5 ways to get out the vote for climate in the final days before the U.S. presidential election on Oct 30, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

The English theologian Thomas Fuller is credited with first saying: “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

The usage was meant figuratively to refer to bad times being followed by good times.

Literally, however, as the sun approaches the horizon there is a gradual brightening of the sky.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

The Secret Service recently announced the next electoral count after the November election is scheduled for January 6, 2025, and this time the event will be classified under the same security level as the inauguration itself. The move follows a request by Washington, D.C.'s mayor and a recommendation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. This comes as former President Donald Trump dodged a question during last week's debate with Kamala Harris about his January 6 actions and refused to acknowledge his 2020 loss. For more, we speak with the director of the new documentary Homegrown, in which he embeds with three Trump supporters in the run-up to the 2020 election and, later, the January 6 insurrection, including members of the far-right Proud Boys. Director Michael Premo warns radicalized Trump supporters continue to threaten violence and upheaval during the current election cycle. “If this was a foreign country, the State Department would issue travel advisories for this fall. So I’m very concerned with the height of violent rhetoric that only seems to have gotten worse.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Myanmar’s junta is trying to conduct a nationwide census to prepare for elections it says it intends to hold in November 2025, but because various rebel groups control big chunks of the country amid a three-year civil war, opponents say only half of the country’s 55 million citizens will be counted.

That’s further indication that the promised elections won’t be fair, say former civilian leaders of the National League for Democracy, or NLD, whose administration the military deposed in a 2021 coup.

Armed rebel groups and members of a “shadow government” formed by former NLD leaders called the National Unity Government, or NUG, are staunchly opposed to any election organized by the junta because they say it would be a sham, allowing the military to legitimize its control over the country.

The census, which the junta says it will complete by mid-October, will include only about 30 million people because only residents of major cities, which the junta still controls, are being counted, a former director of the NLD told Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Furthermore, there are no international observers in the country to verify the accuracy of the census, said Aung Thu Nyein, a researcher with the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar..

“It is difficult to verify the accuracy of the population under the ongoing situation in Myanmar,” he said. “They [the junta] are starting the census this year. Who will recognize it? It would need to be recognized by the United Nations as well as the international community."

‘No census will be accurate’

In war-torn Rakhine state, the junta only controls the capital Sittwe and the townships of Ann, Taungup and Marn Aung, while remaining areas are under the control of the Arakan Army, or AA, which will never facilitate a census, a resident of Rakhine’s Kyaukphyu township told RFA.

“If the AA accepted the junta’s plan for an election, the junta could carry out a census,” said the resident, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Otherwise, the junta can only take a census in its controlled areas.”

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EXPLAINED: Why does Myanmar’s junta want to hold elections?

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Bo Bo Oo, the vice president of the National League for Democracy in Yangon region’s Sanchaung township, noted that amid Myanmar’s economic turmoil, many people have migrated to other countries for work, making it impossible to get accurate population data. 

"As long as the country is at war, no census will be accurate," he said.

Additionally, the junta’s recent enactment of a military draft to shore up troop shortages has prompted thousands of draft-eligible men and women to join armed opposition groups or flee the country, further complicating efforts to get a precise count.

Although the census has been set to end between Oct. 1 and 15, the junta has said that if it is not complete, they will “increase security and extend the date” to finalize it.

At present, armed conflict is underway in 233 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar said in a July 15 report.

The United Nations says about 3 million people have been forced from their homes by fighting between junta troops and those who oppose the military’s coup, many since clashes surged at the beginning of the year. 

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Seven years ago, Oregon’s biggest natural gas company set out to convince lawmakers and residents that an abundant new source of green energy was out there, just waiting to be tapped.

Renewable natural gas is derived from decomposing organic waste at sites like landfills or dairy farms. It could, in theory, replace fossil natural gas in our pipelines with something far better for the environment.

The company, NW Natural, sent a bow-tied lobbyist to the state capital to talk up renewable natural gas, and it helped write a new law promoting development of the new fuel. The company worked with the Oregon Department of Energy to prepare a statewide inventory of potential resources. And, with more than $1 million in customer money, the company targeted those customers with ads, introducing a slogan that highlighted its commitment to lowering carbon emissions: “Less We Can.”

These and subsequent efforts became a template for NW Natural’s industry peers — and effectively tamped down a growing push by climate activists to phase out gas use in Oregon homes and electrify everything instead.

Seven years on, the utility has not delivered on its clean-energy sales pitch. NW Natural has more retail gas customers than ever. It supplies them little, if any, renewable natural gas. It sells them as much fossil natural gas in an average year as it did before. And it wages steady battles in the courts and in local city halls to keep the gas flowing.

Internal industry documents obtained by ProPublica, coupled with an analysis of regulatory filings and testimony before the state Legislature, reveal how NW Natural pursued an approach that perpetuated its core fossil fuel business while the company painted a picture of going green.

“The story they’re telling us is simply not possible,” said former state Rep. Phil Barnhart, a Democrat who voted for some of the company’s legislation when in office.

“What they’re trying to do,” Barnhart said, “is to prevent being put out of business.”

NW Natural, for its part, says that its renewables goals remain attainable and that it firmly believes in them. But “uncertain support from policy makers and regulators along with ongoing barriers demanded by certain climate advocates” have made the company’s path needlessly difficult, spokesperson David Roy wrote in an email. “It’s baffling how a relatively small but loud group of stakeholders have been in opposition to our many efforts to lower system emissions,” he continued. Roy defended the Less We Can campaign as “providing customers with valuable information.”

The story they’re telling us is simply not possible. … What they’re trying to do is to prevent being put out of business.

NW Natural operates in a state where residents and their Democratic leaders demand real action on climate change. Unlike many other public utilities, it does not sell electricity in addition to gas; if a home switches from gas ranges and furnaces to electric, the company likely loses that customer.

As it navigates the new climate economy, the utility has followed a course that other companies, especially energy companies, have taken in the face of public pressure: a loud embrace of environmental goals; then a complicated, often unproven solution; then a continuation of the status quo if and when that solution falls short. The company’s actions ensured that even as it has failed to hit its targets on renewables, and as the planet has kept heating up, it has faced few consequences.

An early ad from the Less We Can campaign suggested that Oregonians — and maybe NW Natural itself — could save the world with little in the way of personal sacrifice. It shows the sun emerging from a cloud. “Renewable Natural Gas is on the way home,” it reads. “Change for the better. Without changing a thing.”

The story of NW Natural’s long fight against the movement to phase out gas emerges from a trove of more than 100 insider documents from the Northwest Gas Association, a trade group that includes the company and five of its regional peers. The utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute obtained the documents — four years’ worth of meeting minutes, strategy papers and PowerPoint presentations from 2017 through 2020 — and recently shared them with ProPublica.

The documents capture a moment when the natural gas industry realized it was becoming a target. Barely a decade before, fossil natural gas had been hailed as a bridge to a low-carbon future. The Obama administration promoted it as a cleaner alternative to coal and diesel, an energy source to rely on until more wind and solar could come online. Until 2010, even the Sierra Club supported it.

But pipelines carrying natural gas leaked more than was first understood, releasing uncombusted methane, a greenhouse gas more than 28 times as harmful as carbon dioxide. And North America’s fracking boom was making fossil natural gas so plentiful and cheap that environmentalists increasingly worried the world would get stuck on this energy bridge forever. Going all-electric, they argued, was the way forward.

The Northwest Gas Association decided it had to confront what internal documents alternately called the “anti-fossil fuel chorus,” “zero fossil fuel paradigm,” “zero carbon threat” or, simply, an “existential challenge.”

Board members met to plan their response one June morning in 2017 at Washington state’s Skamania Lodge, where floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Cascade Mountains and Columbia River Gorge, then again for two days in September at another luxury lodge, Cedarbrook, set on 18 acres of gardens and wetlands outside Seattle.

The gas executives agreed that climate change needed to be addressed but that climate policies in the Northwest should not penalize natural gas utilities or their customers.

They adopted a new strategic plan to push a unified message: Natural gas can be compatible with a low-carbon Northwest economy, thanks in part to emerging concepts like renewable natural gas. (Today, the association and NW Natural say more specifically that policies favoring electric stoves and heat pumps won’t necessarily cut emissions because the region’s strained electrical system relies increasingly on gas-fired power plants.)

To sell the idea of continued gas use, the strategic plan said the industry should adopt a more “assertive advocacy style” that borrows insights from psychological research. People first make value judgments “via intuition and emotion,” the strategic plan noted, not facts. So the association would place “greater emphasis on the heart, in the public battle for the ‘hearts and minds.’”

NW Natural’s representative at the trade association, an executive named Kim Rush (Kim Heiting, at the time), gave her industry colleagues a look inside Less We Can. It was just the kind of play for the heart the strategic plan envisioned.

“It’s a theme line,” Rush’s slideshow, dated July 2017, explained. “A rallying cry. A movement. A coalition with customers. A celebration. A call to action. A clean energy stake-in-the-ground… in 3 words or less.”

NW Natural had already road-tested the new slogan across four focus groups, via a consumer survey with 864 respondents and through television-ad concepts shown to 100 customers and 100 noncustomers. It had readied a new website, www.lesswecan.com, which featured cows and green fields and a FAQ about renewable natural gas.

One of Rush’s slides contained the campaign’s takeaways. Among them: “NW Natural and natural gas have an important, long-term role to play in our energy future”; “NW Natural has a plan, a goal and a running start”; and “Renewable natural gas is an exciting part of that plan.”

The campaign went live in fall 2017. Residents of Portland and other Oregon cities saw Less We Can TV spots, Less We Can YouTube videos, Less We Can newsletters, Less We Can billboards and Less We Can water bottles.

“Can a natural gas company be serious when it says it wants us to use less gas?” one video asked before showing a scene of a couple chopping vegetables together in the kitchen. “Can we really raise our families and lower emissions? Can we heat our homes and fight climate change? Can we expand our economy and use less?”

“Yes,” a narrator answered, as the video cut to an image of free-range cows and hand-drawn arrows pointing to the words “renewable natural gas.”

At the time the Less We Can campaign was getting off the ground, not a single public utility in the United States regularly piped renewable natural gas to customers’ homes. The market for such organics-based gas was mainly clean fuels programs for vehicle fleets. Residential use would be pioneering, even experimental.

But if NW Natural’s ads had gotten ahead of reality, the company was already backing legislation that seemed to portend widespread use of the alternative fuel.

It started earlier in 2017 with a bill in the Oregon Legislature that put forward a seemingly straightforward proposition. Oregon would take stock of its every landfill, every dairy farm, every sewage plant and every conceivable pile of woody debris: sites that could emit methane as organic matter broke down. Why not study how much was out there? The bill, a precursor to similar bills in other states, including Washington, sailed through with little opposition.

The ensuing inventory was a rigorous, yearlong process led by the Oregon Department of Energy that produced a 110-page report to the Legislature in September 2018 — which NW Natural quickly turned into a valuable talking point.

The report’s authors found that Oregon’s “technical potential” for renewable natural gas was significant: nearly 50 billion cubic feet. “That’s equivalent to the total amount of natural gas used by all Oregon residential customers today,” read a NW Natural press release. The company would go on to use variations of this phrase on its website, in annual sustainability reports and in statements to lawmakers.

But “technical potential” represents the amount Oregon could produce if money was no obstacle. NW Natural said little about another, more problematic finding: Using currently available technologies and waste streams, the state could produce just 10 billion cubic feet of gas from organic sources.

Barnhart, the former state lawmaker, says the utility’s selective interpretation of the study not only overstated the size of the resource, it left out “the real denominator” by ignoring industrial and commercial gas use. Including those and transportation customers in the equation would put total gas demand in Oregon at three times the figure NW Natural cited; the state’s potential renewable natural gas resources, using current technology, could meet less than 7% of that demand.

“NW Natural has done a very, very good job of saying true things in a way that is grossly misleading,” Barnhart said.

Roy, the company spokesperson, said it was reasonable to call out Oregon’s full theoretical capacity to make the biogas, noting that all renewable energy sources have required innovation to bring them to market. As for focusing on residential use alone, NW Natural said highlighting a single sector was a useful way to “help people understand the magnitude of the resource.”

The company leaned on the state’s most optimistic numbers in early 2019 when it returned to lawmakers with a second, far more expansive bill that was the first of its kind in the country.

The new bill aimed to address another key barrier to NW Natural’s plans for renewable natural gas. Under existing state rules, utilities had to purchase gas for their customers at the lowest available price, and gas made from biomass could be 10 times more expensive than fossil natural gas. But the bill would allow NW Natural to pursue renewable natural gas and recoup the added cost from its customers. It would be able to spend up to 5% of its annual revenues, some $40 million or more, to secure a dedicated supply.

The legislation also set out ambitious but voluntary goals for NW Natural and other large gas utilities: to produce or acquire renewable natural gas equivalent to 5% of deliveries to retail customers by 2024, 10% by 2029 and 30% by 2050.

The company sent an executive named Anna Chittum to testify before an Oregon Senate committee, and she cited the inventory almost immediately. “They found about 50 billion cubic feet of potential in the state of Oregon,” she said.

Chittum emphasized that this would be a boon not only for the planet but for Oregon businesses.

“Renewable natural gas is a local resource, first and foremost,” she continued. “We believe that Oregon entities like wastewater treatment plants and landfills, some of the dairies in our region and other companies, as well as our natural gas customers, will directly benefit.”

The bill passed easily and with support from both parties just a day before a partisan meltdown tanked a more controversial piece of climate legislation, an effort to create a California-style carbon cap-and-trade system. The changes called for by cap-and-trade would have been mandatory, unlike those created by the renewable gas legislation. (The company now says it wanted binding targets for renewable gas but “other stakeholders,” whom it declined to name, opposed them.)

On social media, the company’s Kim Rush soon cheered the bill’s success, sharing a photo of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown at a September 2019 signing ceremony, flanked by fellow lawmakers, NW Natural CEO David Anderson and at least three other employees of the company.

“Proud of our state for leading the nation on renewable natural gas development!” Rush wrote. “A vital step in the path toward decarbonizing our pipeline network. #LessWeCan.”

Despite the victory lap with Oregon’s chief executive, behind the scenes NW Natural and its allies were preparing to quash measures that activist groups and government officials said were needed to reduce the gas industry’s footprint.

For this mission the Northwest Gas Association initially hired Kelly Evans, a public affairs consultant who once ran the successful reelection campaign of Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire. Evans recommended creating a formal coalition with partners outside the gas industry to lobby for continued natural gas use. It would draw in restaurant associations, labor unions, appliance manufacturers, homebuilders and more.

The winner of a million-dollar contract to build just such a coalition and launch a pro-gas campaign across the Northwest was the communications firm Quinn Thomas. It had helped Washington business interests win fights against cap-and-trade and a carbon tax in that state in 2015 and 2016. Now the firm pledged to “defeat policies detrimental to the natural gas industry” once again.

“When the time comes to ‘turn on’ the coalition to combat a specific proposal,” Quinn Thomas wrote in its bid, “we have extensive experience training and deploying spokespeople for public hearings.”

Evans and Quinn Thomas did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Northwest cities including Bellingham, Washington, and Eugene, Oregon, were beginning to consider natural gas restrictions. Evans had outlined a messaging plan for such fights, one focused on affordability, reliability and resiliency, on solutions like renewable natural gas, and, most of all, on consumer choice: “There are policies being advanced to limit YOUR choice…” and “people want to take it away,” she wrote when describing the plan.

After activists in Eugene accused NW Natural of overstating Oregon’s potential for renewable natural gas, Rush prepared a letter in 2021 to the city manager repeating the consultant’s talking points — “affordability, reliability and choice” — almost verbatim.

Eugene’s City Council nevertheless passed a partial natural gas ban in early 2023. Three days later, a group formed to collect signatures to revoke the ban, its name another apparent echo of the talking points: “Eugene Residents for Energy Choice.” Belying its grassroots name, the group’s work was bankrolled by $1,014,300 in donations — all but $220 of them from NW Natural. (The council eventually revoked the ban on its own.)

Another fight loomed at the state level. With cap-and-trade dead in the Oregon Legislature, Brown had issued an executive order mandating statewide controls on greenhouse gas emissions. For much of 2020 and 2021, the state prepared new rules to put Brown’s order in action.

The Oregon Public Utility Commission, which determines which costs NW Natural can pass along to consumers, soon began to question whether renewable natural gas was the most economical way for the company to meet the new climate rules. What if money spent on renewable natural gas went instead to home weatherization or more efficient appliances? What if it wasn’t spent on natural gas at all?

NW Natural filed suit against regulations stemming from the governor’s executive order in early 2022, serving as the lead plaintiff. The company noted in a letter to its customers that it was committed to addressing climate change, citing its support for past “landmark” renewable natural gas legislation among other actions. It said its legal challenge to the state’s climate program came only “after exhausting all other options.”

NW Natural’s public messaging around renewable natural gas, meanwhile, remained upbeat. Starting in the summer of 2021, its events team visited at least two dozen street fairs and town festivals across Oregon with what it called the Cowthouse (“think cow + outhouse,” the utility explained): a fake toilet with cow legs sticking out below the door.

Those who approached the Cowthouse were challenged to a riddle: “What do a cow, a toilet and a banana peel have in common?” The answer, “RNG,” for renewable natural gas, was stamped on sugar cookies the company handed out.

As it pitched Oregonians on renewable natural gas, NW Natural had gone all out in emphasizing the vast amounts of rotting matter their state could use to produce it. In the end, the company opted not to use a bit of homegrown waste. It turned instead to other states, especially Nebraska.

Meat and poultry giant Tyson Foods kept two of its biggest beef slaughterhouses there, each week churning through tens of thousands of cows that, in turn, churned out hundreds of thousands of pounds of manure as they awaited their end at the facility.

Rotting manure lets off methane. Rotting carcasses let off methane. Rotting garbage lets off methane. The gas is so much worse for the climate than carbon dioxide, ounce for ounce, that capturing a farm or landfill’s uncontrolled methane and purifying it to pipeline quality could, under the right circumstances, offset the harm from emissions it creates when burned.

NW Natural has described renewable natural gas as “carbon neutral” in corporate reports and a “zero-carbon resource” in news releases. But in more recent filings with Oregon regulators, the company estimates that gas from its project in Dakota City, Nebraska, while cleaner than ordinary natural gas, still packs 25% of the climate impact. At the Tyson slaughterhouse in Lexington, Nebraska, it’s 40%.

In an interview, Chittum noted that there is no universal standard to measure how much a renewable natural gas project actually helps the climate. By the standards followed by some state programs, including in California, she said the Tyson projects could possibly be certified as carbon-zero, or even carbon-negative. But it’s expensive to hire someone to do a full accounting, and Oregon doesn’t require NW Natural to prove any benefit — so “we just haven’t spent … the third-party dollars to go calculate all of that,” she said.

Methane from the Tyson operations is captured and piped not to Oregon, but to customers mainly near the two plants. NW Natural counts it as a credit against the fossil natural gas its own customers burn.

For 2023, NW Natural reported renewable natural gas from the Tyson projects, some dairy digesters in Wisconsin, a sewage treatment plant in New York and a food-waste project in Utah.

“It doesn’t matter where the renewable molecule of RNG comes from if reducing emissions is the goal,” NW Natural’s Roy told ProPublica.

NW Natural has notched a series of wins in recent months.

For the fourth year in a row, it was named one of the best gas utilities in the West by the survey company J.D. Power. For the third year in a row, it was named one of the world’s most ethical companies by Ethisphere, a for-profit company that rates other companies’ ethics for a fee.

In late December, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in favor of NW Natural in overturning the state climate program that resulted from Brown’s executive order.

In May, NW Natural touted the results of a poll it had commissioned: It said 72% of Oregon voters opposed bans on natural gas in new homes and buildings, a 9-point increase since 2019. “Voters’ attention is more focused on what they believe are pressing concerns, such as homelessness,” a press release said. More than 75% of respondents supported efforts promoting renewable natural gas.

It doesn’t matter where the renewable molecule of RNG comes from if reducing emissions is the goal.

But the renewable gas business has not gone as billed.

The company’s data for 2023 showed that even as it harnesses the waste streams of one of the world’s biggest meatpackers — at an anticipated cost of $38 million, if two more planned Tyson projects come online — NW Natural is falling far short of the share of its supply it said would come from the alternative fuel.

In a document filed in August with the Public Utility Commission, the company said it had slowed its procurement and did not expect to hit the goal of 5% it had set for 2024. It blamed “policy and regulatory uncertainty,” particularly the commission’s skepticism of its renewable natural gas plans.

Less We Can is taking on a new meaning.

After years of fanfare about renewable natural gas, what’s its share of NW Natural’s gas supply today?

Less than 1%.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by McKenzie Funk.

Police in Nam Dinh province arrested Pham Hoang, 66, on Aug. 29 for planning to distribute leaflets on the 79th anniversary of President Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence from French colonial rule, according to the People’s Police newspaper. 

They accused him of supporting the banned Provisional National Government of Vietnam, led by U.S.-based activist Dao Minh Quan.

The group was founded in the U.S. in 1991 by soldiers and refugees loyal to the government that ruled South Vietnam before the country was unified under communism in 1975.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security listed the Provisional National Government of Vietnam as a terrorist organization in 2018. Since then, more than 60 people have been convicted and jailed for long terms for being members, according to Radio Free Asia data.

Police accused Hoang of contacting the group via Facebook in 2019, filling out an application form and being accepted as a member.

They seized documents and money for him, which they said were related to Hoang’s “criminal acts.”

Investigators said Hoang posted videos and articles on social media rejecting communism and promoting the work of the government-in-exile.

They said he was asked many times to leave the group but refused.

Separately, on Sept. 3, police in Hau Giang province arrested Vuong Van Hong Nam, 61, on charges of subversion. They said he was an active member of the same group, with the aim of overthrowing the government.

According to Public Security News, he learned about the group through social media in 2015, and created many online accounts to communicate with members before joining.

Police repeatedly asked Nam to leave the group but he refused, the paper said.

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In April this year, a court in Gia Lai province sentenced 10 people to prison for participating in activities of the government-in-exile.

In June, a court in Tien Giang province sentenced two people to prison for attempting to overthrow the government. They were also accused of participating in Dao Minh Quan’s exile organization.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 8 August 2024, a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) finished her 36-hour shift at the hospital, ate dinner with her colleagues, and went to the college’s seminar hall to rest before her next shift. The next day, shortly after being reported missing, she was found in a seminar room, her lifeless body displaying all the signs of terrible violence. Since Indian law forbids revealing the names of victims of sexual crimes, her name will not appear in this newsletter.

This young doctor’s story is by no means an isolated incident: every fifteen minutes, a woman in India reports a rape. In 2022, at least 31,000 rapes were reported, a 12% increase from 2020. These statistics vastly underrepresent the extent of sexual crimes, many of which go unreported for fear of social sanction and patriarchal disbelief. In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an extensive study of violence against women using data from 161 countries between 2000 and 2018, which showed that nearly one in three, or 30%, of women ‘have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner or both’. What this young doctor faced was an extreme version of an outrageously commonplace occurrence.

Nalini Malini (India), Listening to the Shades, 2007.

Not long after her body was discovered, RG Kar College Principal Dr Sandip Ghosh revealed the victim’s name and blamed her for what had happened. The hospital authorities informed the young doctor’s parents that she had committed suicide. They waited hours for the authorities to allow a post-mortem, which was done in haste. ‘She was my only daughter’, her mother said. ‘I worked hard for her to become a doctor. And now she is gone’. The police surrounded the family home and would not allow anyone to meet them, and the government pressured the family to cremate her body quickly and organised the entire cremation process. They wanted the truth to vanish. It was only because activists of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) blocked the ambulance that the family was able to see the body.

On 10 August, the day after the young doctor’s body was discovered, the DYFI, Students Federation of India (SFI), Communist Party of India (Marxist), and other organisations held protests across West Bengal to ensure justice. These protests grew rapidly, with medical personnel across the state, and then across India, standing outside their workplaces with placards expressing their political anger. The women’s movement, which saw massive protests in 2012 after a young woman in Delhi was gang raped and murdered, again took to the streets. The number of young women who attended these protests reflects the scale of sexual violence in Indian society, and their speeches and posters were saturated with sadness and anger. ‘Reclaim the night’, tens of thousands of women shouted in protests across West Bengal on 14 August, India’s independence day.

Rani Chanda (India), The Solace, 1932

The most remarkable aspect of this protest movement was the mobilisation of medical unions and doctors. On 12 August, the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), with whom the murdered doctor was affiliated, called upon all doctors to suspend non-emergency medical services. The next day, doctors in government hospitals across India put on their white coats and complied. The head of the Indian Medical Association, Dr RV Asokan, met with Union Health Minister JP Nadda to present five demands:

1. hospitals must be safe zones;
2. the central government must pass a law protecting health workers;
3. the family must be given adequate compensation;
4. the government must conduct a time-bound investigation; and
5. resident doctors must have decent working conditions (and not have to work a 36-hour shift).

The WHO reports that up to 38% of health workers suffer physical violence during their careers, but in India the numbers are astronomically higher. For instance, nearly 75% of Indian doctors report experiencing some form of violence while more than 80% say that they are over-stressed and 56% do not get enough sleep. Most of these doctors are attacked by patients’ families who believe their relatives have not received adequate healthcare. Testimonies of female doctors during the protests indicate that women health workers routinely experience sexual harassment and violence not only from patients, but from other hospital employees. The dangerous culture in these institutions, many of them say, is unbearable, as is evidenced by the high suicide rates among nurses that are committed in response to sexual and other forms of harassment – a serious problem that received little attention. An online search using the keywords ‘nurses’, ‘India’, ‘sexual harassment’, and ‘suicide’ brings up a stunning number of reports from just the past year. This explains why doctors and nurses have reacted with such vehemence to the death of the young doctor at RG Kar.

Dipali Bhattacharya (India), Untitled, 2007.

The West Bengal government is defined by its fear of the people. On 18 August, the state’s two iconic football teams, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, were set to play for the Durand Cup. When it became clear that fans intended to protest from the stands, the government cancelled the match. This did not stop the teams’ fans from joining with fans of the third-most important West Bengal football team, Mohammedan Sporting, to mobilise outside the Yuva Bharati Stadium to protest the match cancellation and the young doctor’s murder. ‘We want justice for RG Kar’, they said. In response, they were attacked by the police.

Shipra Bhattacharya (India), Desire, 2006.

Many years ago, the poet Subho Dasgupta wrote the beloved and powerful poem Ami sei meye (I Am That Girl), which could very well be the soundtrack of these struggles:

I am that girl.
The one you see every day on the bus, train, street
whose sari, tip of forehead, earrings, and ankles
you see everyday
and
dream of seeing more.
You see me in your dreams, as you wished.
I am that girl.

…

I am that girl – from the shanty Kamin Basti in Chai Bagan, Assam
who you want to abduct to the Sahibi Bungalow at midnight,
want to see her naked body with your eyes intoxicated with the burning light of the fireplace.
I am that girl.

…

In hard times, the family relies on me.
Mother’s medicine is bought with my tuition earnings.
My extra income bought my brother’s books.
My whole body was drenched in heavy rain
with the black sky on his head.
I am an umbrella.
The family lives happily under my protection.

…

Like a destructive wildfire
I will continue to move forward! And on either side of my way forward
numerous headless bodies
will continue to suffer from
terrible pain:
the body of civilisation
body of progress
body of improvement.
The body of society.

Maybe I’m the girl! Maybe! Maybe…

The paintings in this newsletter are all done by women who were born in Bengal.

Warmly,

Vijay

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

“Leave or die” are the horrid words threatening largely unprotected Palestinian civilians in Gaza as dismayed populations around the world demand moral decency, or at least some indication of sanity, from their non-responsive governments.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. For decades, Israel has flouted international norms by refusing to acknowledge its nuclear weapons arsenal. Nor has it signed relevant treaties governing the biological weapons it possesses. For years, Israel has flagrantly violated the Geneva Conventions and basic principles of customary international law through its forcible acquisition of territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and through its transfer of Israeli settlers into the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Now, Israel’s genocidal attacks against Palestinians living in Gaza have cost the lives of at least 39,677 people. Tens of thousands more are believed to be buried beneath the rubble, with at least 90,000 wounded and the overwhelming majority of its displaced 1.9 million population facing starvation.

Israel’s failure to comply with international treaties and humanitarian law signal an acute need for other countries to organize weapons embargoes, cease trade deals, and provide support for civilian peacekeepers to bring about a permanent ceasefire.

Instead of unwavering adherence to international law, the United States continues to arm and protect Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians, which now includes using starvation as a weapon of war.

We must try to absorb what it means to live as a refugee in an open-air concentration camp—already one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, even before 70 percent of its housing was destroyed. More than 341 mosques and three churches have been destroyed. 2,000-pound bombs have been dropped on tents in places deemed safe areas.

Innocent civilians are being killed by snipers. Thirty-one out of thirty-six hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. Escape routes are cut off. Persistent restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid into and around Gaza are driving a desperate shortage of food, fuel, and medicine. As access to humanitarian relief is deliberately choked off, children are being collectively punished while Israeli leaders denounce them as animals. The world watches in horror as surgeons are forced to amputate the limbs of wounded children with no available anesthetics.

A new polio epidemic emerges while Israel vaccinates its soldiers but leaves the Palestinian civilian population vulnerable. Newly released prisoners have said they were subjected to torture, including being waterboarded and raped.

Rather than bring suspects before international courts, Israel has resorted to assassinations of the very negotiators with which it purports to be seeking peace, and in a manner clearly intended to expand the conflict into a global war involving multiple nuclear-armed nations.

In its July 19, 2024, authoritative Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Settlement Policy and Practices, the World Court clearly declared the Israeli settlement project in the Occupied Territories to be illegal. The Court outlined the obligation of all parties to the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention to discontinue any economic or trade dealings with Israel which might help perpetuate Israel’s occupation and unlawful presence in the territory. Countries that signed or ratified these agreements are obligated to immediately stop arms exports to Israel and to use political, military, and economic influence to stop Israel’s flagrant, escalating violations of international humanitarian law.

The World Court has provided strong, clear words denouncing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. As during the Vietnam War, ordinary citizens can no longer abide with the lawless barbarism of continuing assaults against Palestinians.

“Rolling the bones” is a slang expression for gambling. With a regional war perhaps now unavoidable in the Middle East, the genocidal derangement of the United States and Europe over Israel’s actions may well lead to a nuclear war that ends the human species. Failing to use our words at this most crucial juncture for humanity would be, as Camus said, a formidable gamble indeed.

This article first appeared in The Progressive.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

“Vice President Kamala Harris has made a great decision in picking Governor Tim Walz for her running mate to defeat Donald Trump. From his time in the classroom to serving in the National Guard and Congress, Governor Walz has delivered tremendous wins for working people in Minnesota. Under his leadership, the state legislature passed the most pro-worker package of laws in decades, the Minnesota Miracle, making it easier for workers to form unions, strengthening worker protections, cracking down on union-busting practices, and creating the nation’s first nursing home workforce standards board.

Governor Walz has been a steadfast partner to Minnesota’s working families. He walked a day in the shoes of home care workers and made record investments in public education, including unemployment benefits for bus drivers, food service workers, paraeducators and others who do essential work supporting students. He paved the way for record contracts between his administration and health care workers, raising wages to as much as $22.50 an hour. Governor Walz has championed guaranteed family and medical leave for workers and middle-class tax breaks for Minnesotans. He supported janitors and nursing home workers l when they were on strike in March, and we were proud to see him join UAW workers on the picket line during last year’s strikes.

In contrast to the Trump-Vance ticket, who continue to spew hate and try to divide us, Governor Walz has actually championed not-yet-union workers, racial and immigrant justice and climate action. Working people will decide this election. Voters of all races and backgrounds are excited to march to the polls like never before to elect the leaders who work for us and promote them to the White House: Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

On July 19, shortly after state media reported Trong’s death after 13 years in Vietnam’s top government job, former prisoner of conscience Pham Thanh Nghien posted a Facebook story titled “Why is NPT exempted from being judged right now and instead we must wait for history’s judgment?”

“No need to wait for history, Vietnamese people should have the right to judge him straight away,” wrote Nghien, who lives in exile in the U.S. with her family. A day earlier, she posted a commentary discussing President To Lam taking over the general secretary role if Trong died and recalling an incident in which Lam, then minister of public security, was photographed eating gold-coated steak at an upscale restaurant in London in 2021.

On July 22, she received a Facebook notification in both English and Vietnamese regarding the two posts.

“Your post is unavailable in Vietnam. [Because of] a legal request from the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications (MOIC), we have to restrict access to your post,” Facebook said.

Explaining the decision, the Meta subsidiary said that it had “evaluated legal requests before taking action upon legal requests or requests by governments” and “taken into consideration human rights impacts.”

Facebook suggested Nghien contact the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications if she had any questions.

The former political prisoner said Facebook had blocked interactions, removed her stories, and even shut down her account many times over the years. She sometimes received company notifications about their action but this time, she said, Meta had not provided a concrete and clear explanation regarding the communication ministry’s intervention.

Nghien, who served four years in prison for protesting against China’s claim to islands in the South China Sea, accused Facebook, which used to be a platform where many Vietnamese raised dissenting voices, of trading human rights for profits. 

“Facebook has already surrendered,” she told Radio Free Asia.” They are pursuing profits and abandoning their commitment to ensure freedom of speech while doing business in Vietnam. It appears that they are cooperating or even compromising with the Communist Party of Vietnam in censoring Facebook accounts of political dissidents and posts with content disliked by the Vietnamese government.”

RFA emailed the MOIC to verify whether it had asked Facebook to block Nghien's articles in Vietnam but did not receive any responses at time of publication.

RFA also contacted Facebook to verify that it had restricted access to Nghien’s posts in response to Vietnamese government requests but did not receive an immediate response.

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Journalist Le Trung Khoa, who lives in Germany, said he received similar notifications from Facebook. The owner of the Thoibao.de website, which publishes articles critical of the Vietnamese government, said on Tuesday Facebook notified him that his stories about Nguyen Phu Trong were not available in Vietnam.

“This morning, I received notification from Facebook that four of my stories were not available in Vietnam upon MOIC request,” he said. “This is new, as Facebook used to quietly block posts in Vietnam without any notifications for the past year.”

California-based Facebook said in a transparency report, that from July 2023 to December 2023, it restricted access in Vietnam to more than 2,300 items in response to reports from the MOIC, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information and the Ministry of Public Security for allegedly violating local laws on proving information that distorts, slanders, or insults the reputation of an organization or the honor and dignity of an individual under Article 5.1 (D) Decree no. 72/2013/ND-CP. The remaining items were restricted for alleged violations of other Vietnamese laws.

Facebookers fined, even beaten

Vietnamese authorities also cracked down on domestic dissenters who turned to social media to criticize what Trong had done or failed to do during his tenure.

State media cited Ho Chi Minh City police as saying that after Trong’s death, a number of individuals used social media to post information that was “fabricated, distorting, attacking, and undermining the great national unity, lowering the prestige of the Party and State.”

State media also reported that on July 20 and 21 Ho Chi Minh City police had fined three people VND7.5 million (US$300) each for posting material about Trong, ordering them to pledge not to repeat the violations.

“Hanoi is trying to frame Trong as a ‘new Uncle Ho’ to repolish old-fashioned values of the Communist Party,” said a Hanoi-based political commentator who requested anonymity, referring to revolutionary leader and former president Ho Chi Minh. 

“The efforts to clarify Trong’s [legacy] and criticize the Communist Party now become a felony and are heavily suppressed."

An activist from Ho Chi Minh City, who also wanted to remain anonymous for security reasons, told RFA that the police had summoned him to discuss a post on his Facebook page in which he expressed his disagreement with a government “order” asking the whole country to mourn Trong.

He said police beat him and forced him to acknowledge that the Facebook account and post were his. However, he refused to do so, or to sign any documents. He said that before freeing him, police told him that they would summon him again in the course of their work on the case..

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

What Schwikowski couldn’t see yet, but would find later in the lab, is that it wasn’t just the surface that was affected: Climate change had penetrated the ice and trashed its utility as an environmental record. Warming weather had created meltwater that trickled down, washing away trapped aerosols that researchers like her use as a historical record of forest fires and other environmental events. Because of the melt, she says, “we really lose this information.”

Schwikowski, an environmental chemist at the Paul Scherrer Institut near Zurich, is the scientific lead for the Ice Memory Foundation, a collaborative group that aims to preserve glacial ice records before climate change wrecks them. Their goal is to get cores from 20 glaciers around the world in 20 years, and, starting in 2025, lock them away for long-term storage in an ice cave in the Antarctic — a natural freezer that will hold them at close to minus 60 degrees F (minus 50 degrees C). Since the program’s start in 2015 they have taken cores from eight sites, in France, Bolivia, Switzerland, Russia, Norway, and Italy. But the core attempted from Corbassière was a failure — and has the team wondering if they are already too late.

The team, watching in despair as ice cores melt and muddle, is not alone in seeing climate change wreaking havoc with scientific records — often in unexpected ways. Geologists who hunt for meteorites on the ice in Antarctica are finding their mission thwarted by warming temperatures. And while archaeologists who study the artifacts spat out by ice patches are seeing a bonanza of new finds, they are also racing to get to those objects before they rot. Other heritage sites are slumping into thawing permafrost.

What all these researchers have in common is a race to preserve what they can, while they can. When you are standing on a glacier that’s literally melting under your feet, says Schwikowski, “you really feel the urgency.”

Due to climate change, high mountain glaciers are now endangered, losing ice faster than they are gaining it. Studies of a few dozen well-monitored glaciers in the World Glacier Inventory have shown that the pace of glacial ice loss has accelerated from a few inches per year in the 1980s to nearly 3 feet per year in the 2010s. A 2023 model of some 215,000 mountain glaciers showed that nearly half of them could disappear entirely by 2100 if the world warms by just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the ambitious maximum warming target of the Paris Agreement.

Glaciers have annual layers, just like tree rings. At the top, a single year might see a few feet of snow added to the surface. Hundreds of feet down, weight compresses ice that is thousands of years old into thin, flowing layers, where less than an inch may contain a century of snowfall.

This ice preserves all kinds of information from the time when it was deposited. A spike in lead pollution comes at the height of the Roman Empire. A drop in pollen reveals the collapse of farming during the Black Death. The Chernobyl accident left a layer of radioactive cesium. Black carbon and the sugars from burned cellulose map out changes in forest fire activity across the globe. The ratio of different oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in the water also reveals the air temperature of the time.

Many mountain glaciers have been cored and studied over the past decades. Since scientific methods and research questions change over time, researchers preserve some cores or sections intact for future reference — to study, say, the genetics of ancient DNA. The National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Colorado, for example, holds 82,000 feet of collected ice cores — mostly from Greenland and the Antarctic, but also from North American mountaintop glaciers.

The problem of glacial ice melting has been apparent for many years, says paleoclimatologist Ellen Mosley-Thompson of Ohio State University. In 2000, when she and her colleagues drilled to bedrock on Mount Kilimanjaro, they found the surface dated to the 1950s. The top 50 years of snow was gone. “Everyone in our community is worried,” she says.

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Dorothea Moser, a PhD student who works on the ice core chemistry team at the British Antarctic Survey, says she has seen cores damaged by melt even in polar regions, including Greenland and coastal Antarctica. “I’ve got records from Young Island [in the Southern Ocean] that have been heavily melt affected,” she says. She is now working to see what kinds of information can still be salvaged from corrupted cores.

Moser warns that ice cores are highly vulnerable to increased melting through global warming. “This is why we need to retrieve them, where possible,” she says.

In 2015, glaciologist Jérôme Chappellaz of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and chemist Carlo Barbante of the University of Venice established the Ice Memory Foundation to capture archival cores from endangered mountain glaciers. “Ice Memory is attempting to answer the call of these glaciers before they disappear,” says Mosley-Thompson, who is not a member of the foundation.

Fewer than a dozen teams around the world do coring work in high mountain settings, says Schwikowski — it takes skill and determination to haul the equipment up to these remote locations, she says, often in collaboration with mountaineers. Progress has been slow. And, just halfway into their collection effort, the work at Corbassière has shown it may already be too late to get pristine records from some sites.

The team only retrieved around 60 feet of core from Corbassière, rather than the 260 feet down to bedrock that they had hoped for, because the drill got stuck in melted-and-refrozen ice. And a comparison of this truncated 2020 core with a 2018 sample from the same spot showed that the record was corrupted. While the temperature record was preserved, the spikes of nitrate, sulfate, and ammonia they had seen in the 2018 core had, by 2020, washed away. The team thinks the cumulative effect of meltwater is to blame. Deeper ice may or may not be damaged, too.

The team has no idea how many other glaciers are affected: A core that the group took more recently from Svalbard in Norway was similarly muddled, says Schwikowski, while one taken from Monte Rosa in the Alps in 2021 seems to be intact. “I am afraid that most of them are already affected,” she says. “We will see what we can do.”

The loss of paleorecords in glacial ice is also distressing to archaeologists, who use those signals to help unravel the behaviors of past societies and the environmental conditions they faced. Of course, archaeologists also have another category of study material: human artifacts. To find these, they often look to ice patches — wind-blown snow drift accumulations that can be thousands of years old. Christian Thomas, an archaeologist with the Yukon Territory’s Department of Tourism and Culture, says such patches typically overlap with traditional summer hunting grounds, so ancient weapons are often found there.

The first documented find from an ice patch was an arrow in Norway during a particularly warm year in 1914. Discoveries were only random and occasional until the 1990s, when such finds sped up along with the rate of ice melt, says Lars Holger Pilø, co-director of the Secrets of the Ice program at Norway’s Department of Cultural Heritage. “We had no idea how intense the human use of the high mountains had been until all these artifacts started to emerge from the retreating ice,” he says. “In that way, we are unlikely beneficiaries of global warming.”

Since Pilø started his own work in 2006, he says the number of finds and sites has exploded, from a few hundred finds and less than 10 sites in 2006 to more than 4,000 finds from 69 sites in 2023. Some objects date back 6,000 years. They have found more arrows, clothing (including a 1,700-year-old Iron Age tunic and a 3,400-year-old Early Bronze Age shoe), and even prehistoric skis. Such items are often in pristine condition, “frozen in time,” says Pilø. “But once they become exposed to the elements, the clock starts ticking fast, and they will [decompose and] be lost if they are not found and conserved.”

“Our ice patch sites are considered imperiled,” says Thomas, who doesn’t expect the ones in the Yukon to survive the next 20 to 30 years. Both in the Yukon and in Norway, scientists are on a quest to collect archaeological finds as quickly as possible.

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While markers of human history are being erased, other researchers are worried, too, about access to markers of the solar system’s history: meteorites. These inch-sized chunks of the moon, Mars, or the asteroid belt contain vital evidence about the elemental composition of celestial objects and their origins. These rocks fall to Earth everywhere but are easiest to spot against white snow. Hundreds of meteorites fall over the vast surface of the Antarctic each year, and, over millennia, this has built up to an estimated stock of 300,000 to 850,000 space rocks sitting out on the ice. Researchers typically go out and collect about 1,000 a year, from “blue ice” fields where the meteorites are brought to the surface by ice flow and where no fresh snow falls to hide them.

Glaciologists Harry Zekollari and Veronica Tollenaar of the Université libre de Bruxelles set out to map the best places to hunt for these rocks, using an artificial intelligence model. Their work revealed that temperature is a major factor determining where meteorites can be found. The reason is simple: black rocks absorb heat from the sun. Even a brief spate of 16 degrees F (minus 9 degrees C) is warm enough for a meteorite to melt the snow beneath it, says Tollenaar, allowing it to sink — just as gravel thrown onto an icy driveway will drill down into tiny holes during the heat of the day.

The team estimates that some 5,000 meteorites sink out of sight this way each year and that every tenth of a degree Celsius of warming adds an additional 5,000 to the loss. By the end of the century, they predict, some 25 to 75 percent of the meteorites sitting on Antarctic ice could disappear from view, taking scientific information with them.

The Ice Memory Foundation is continuing on its mission to gather and store ice cores. But it’s hard going. Trips planned to take a core from Kilimanjaro in 2022, and in Tajikistan more recently, both fell through, says Schwikowski — it can be difficult to coordinate the necessary permits, people, and funding to get up these mountains and take samples away.

The team does have permission to store their ice cores in the Antarctic. This November they plan to ship a balloon to Concordia Station, the French-Italian research base in East Antarctica, where it will be blown up and snow piled on top to make an ice cave big enough to drive into. The ice cores are due to be shipped there at the end of 2025, where they will be stored in insulated boxes to keep the temperature steady. Such a cave should be stable for at least a decade, after which another, similar cave can be built if needed.

Of course, you don’t have to go to the Antarctic to find cold. There are plenty of freezers capable of maintaining such low temperatures, including the National Science Foundation ice core facility in Denver. But Schwikowski points out that these facilities use energy and are vulnerable to temperature fluctuations and even failure. In 2017, a rare double malfunction caused the Canadian Ice Core Archive freezer in Alberta to warm up to around 100 degrees F (40 degrees C) without triggering the right alarms. Several valuable core sections melted. In a separate event, Thomas says that they, too, lost ice when walk-in freezers in the Yukon failed.

Aside from logistical considerations, says Schwikowski, there’s a beauty to storing this ice in a place that sits outside of national ownership: “The Antarctic is a continent of peace and research.” She just hopes to get to the mountain glaciers quickly enough to store their ice. “It worries me a lot,” she says. “We are not so fast. It is not easy.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The race to save glacial ice records before they melt away on Jul 14, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Nicola Jones, Yale Environment 360.

At the 1.05.31-minute mark in the conversation, Modi was asked about the Opposition’s absence in the Ram Mandir consecration ceremony and whether their decision would have an impact on the election results. In reply, the PM criticized the Opposition saying they could not come out of a mentality of servitude. He then went on to add, “Mahatma Gandhi was a great man. Wasn’t it our responsibility in these 75 years to make sure that the world knew Mahatma Gandhi? Nobody knows Mahatma Gandhi. It was only when the ‘Gandhi’ film was made that the world was curious to know who this man was. We haven’t done it. It was our responsibility. If the world knows Martin Luther King, if the world knows the South African leader Nelson Mandela (the interviewers prompt the name before Modi repeats it), Gandhi was no less than them. You have to accept this. I am saying this after travelling across the globe…”

It is understood that the PM referred to British filmmaker Richard Attenborough’s biopic of Gandhi released in 1982, where Ben Kingsley played the eponymous character. The following year, ‘Gandhi’ received 11 Academy Award nominations and won 8, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Prime Minister Modi is Wrong

To say that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was largely unknown to the world till the 1982 movie is to betray a lack of basic awareness about the life and times of the most iconic Indian who ever lived. The international media coverage of Gandhi from as early as the 1920s and several other kinds of documentary evidence of his popularity in the West — among celebrities and common folks alike — prove this beyond an iota of doubt.

Gandhi in International Media

A simple keyword search on Google with the terms ‘Gandhi on international newspapers’ reveals several reports on Gandhi by prominent international newspapers and also lesser known dailies from the West from the 1920s till his death in 1948 and beyond.

Gandhi’s arrest on March 10, 1922, in Ahmadabad for writing three articles in ‘Young India’ was reported by the illustrated British weekly, The Graphic, on March 18, 1922. This is one of the first mentions of him in a Western newspaper.

The Civil and Military Gazette, published from Lahore, on March 12, 1922 carried a Reuters report on an agitation in Nairobi in response to Gandhi’s arrest.

Among the prominent Western media outlets, mention must be made of The Time magazine which featured Gandhi as its Man of the Year in 1930. The related article was published on January 5, 1931, and was headlined “Saint Gandhi”: Man of the Year 1930. It said, “It was exactly twelve months ago that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Indian National Congress promulgated the Declaration of Indian Independence. It was in March that he marched to the sea to defy Britain’s salt tax as some New Englanders once defied a British tea tax… It was in May that Britain jailed Gandhi at Poona. Last week he was still there, and some 30,000 members of his Independence movement were caged elsewhere. The British Empire was still wondering fearfully what to do about them all, the Empire’s most staggering problem … it was in a jail that the year’s end found the little half-naked brown man whose 1930 mark on world history will undoubtedly loom largest of all.”

The cover of the concerned issue of The Time had Gandhi’s portrait.

‘The father of the nation’ would be on The Time Magazine cover on two more occasions, on March 31, 1930 and June 30, 1947.

One of the most well-known portrayals of Gandhi in an international newspaper was the Iowa-based Burlington Hawk-eye’s full page feature on him on Page 5 on September 20, 1931. The banner headline read, “Most Talked About Man in the World”.

The iconic photograph of Gandhi at his spinning wheel, too, was taken by a foreigner. In 1946, American documentary photographer Margaret Bourke-White was in India working on a feature which would eventually be published under the headline “India’s Leaders,” in the May 27, 1946, issue of LIFE. The photo of Gandhi at the wheel did not make it to the gallery which had two other pictures of him. A couple of years later, the iconic photo was used by LIFE in its multiple-page tribute to Gandhi after his assassination.

The news of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948 was on the front page of several foreign newspapers. Below are a few examples:

The New York Times 

The report can be read here.

The Guardian

The report can be read here.

The Washington Post

The Daily Telegraph

There were others as well.

The West’s Interest in Gandhi, the Person

The keen interest which the West took in Gandhi and his ideas is best exemplified by the eagerness of some of the biggest celebrities from Europe and the US to know him personally. One instance that readily comes to mind is Gandhi’s meeting with Charles Chaplin.

Chaplin, by then dubbed as the most famous man in the world, was keen to meet Gandhi when the latter was in London to attend a Round Table Conference in 1931. Gandhi, totally uninterested in films, had not heard of him. According to reports, the man who was hosting Gandhi at Kingsley Hall told him that he must meet Chaplin, who was the most famous man in the world “except for you, of course”. Gandhi agreed to meet Chaplin only after someone had told him that the latter “was sympathetic to our cause”. The meeting eventually took place on September 22, 1931, at 45 Beckton Road in Canning Town, London.

Chaplin described the meeting and the exchange of ideas elaborately in his autobiography (Pages 342, 343).

Martin Luther King Jr wrote a piece on the Hindustan Times paying his tributes to Gandhi on the latter’s 10th death anniversary in 1958. He wrote:

“He (Gandhi) would resist evil as much as the man who uses violence, but he resists it without external violence or violence of the spirit. That is what Gandhism does. It is a method of the strong. If the only alternative is between cowardice and violence, it is better — as Gandhi said — to use violence, but there is another way. I myself gained this insight from Gandhi. When I was in theological school, I thought the only way we could solve our problem of segregation was an armed revolt. I felt that the Christian ethic of love was confined to individual relationships. I could not see how it could work in social conflict. Then I read Gandhi’s ethic of love as revealed in Jesus but raised to a social strategy for social transformation.”

Among others, Albert Einstein’s correspondence with Gandhi has been studied by followers of the two men over the ages with keen interest. In 1931, he wrote in a letter to Gandhi, “You have shown through your words, that it is possible to succeed without violence even with those who have not discarded the method of violence. We may hope that your example will spread beyond the borders of the country… I hope that I will be able to meet you face to face someday.”

Later, on Gandhi’s 70th birthday in 1939, Einstein wrote of Gandhi, “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” In fact, Prime Minister Modi himself quoted this in his op-ed piece in The New York Times on October 2, 2019, titled “Why India and the World Need Gandhi”. In the same piece, he also wrote about the influence Gandhi had on Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King jr.

The list of Western celebrities who knew Gandhi personally or from a distance before 1982 is, perhaps, endless. Among them are Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, Ho Chi Minh, John Lennon, Pearl S Buck et al. American journalist Louis Fischer wrote ‘The Life of Mahatma Gandhi’, possibly the most widely read biography of the man, in 1950.

It is not that only the notable men took a keen interest in Gandhi. The following video, uploaded on YouTube by the Press Information Bureau of the Govt. of India, shows a large crowd of “working class people” greeting Gandhi in Lancaster and London in 1931.

Besides, several countries issued postage stamps in honour of Gandhi way before the 1982 film was even shot. These include the US in 1961, the Republic of Congo in 1967, and around 40 countries on Gandhi centenary in 1969.

It is, thus, inexplicable, why Modi claimed that Gandhi was unknown to the world before the 1982 movie. The claim, coming from the Prime Minister of India, is factually incorrect and bizarre.

Sources: The British Newspaper Archive, mkgandhi.org, PIB, archives of publications mentioned in the story.

The post The world knew Mahatma Gandhi for his ideas years before the 1982 film; PM Modi’s claim incorrect & inexplicable appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

We speak with Palestinian American University of Michigan student Salma Hamamy, who was pepper-sprayed and beaten at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor when the Gaza solidarity encampment there became the latest to be violently dismantled Tuesday morning in the nationwide crackdown on student-led protests in solidarity with Palestine. Student protesters set up the encampment about a month ago to demand the University of Michigan’s endowment divest from companies with ties to Israel, but school President Santa Ono claimed the peaceful action had become a threat to public safety. Dozens of officers raided the encampment before dawn, arresting and hospitalizing students after pepper-spraying and pushing them to the ground. “I repeatedly said that my family has been killed, and that is why I am here. And as I was saying that through the megaphone, police officers snatched the megaphone out from my hand,” says Hamamy. She explains the university has refused to discuss divestment with protesters. “Instead of meeting with us at the table and meeting with us at the encampment, they decided to meet us with violent force and chemical attacks.” University of Michigan President Santa Ono is slated to appear before Congress Thursday alongside the presidents of UCLA and Yale.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A senior official at the State Security Agency (SSA) telephoned Monare, who is also the public broadcaster’s Group Executive of News and Current Affairs, on April 18 and said he had to undergo top-level security vetting, including a polygraph test, according to an SABC TV interview with Monare on April 29, a City Press news report, and a joint statement by local media freedom organizations condemning the request as intimidatory and a threat to press freedom.

The SSA’s vetting request, made on behalf of the SABC, followed a leaked audio recording, reviewed by CPJ, of President Cyril Ramaphosa telling the African National Congress’ election committee on April 11 that local media had “no right to be negative” towards the governing party and that its election campaign messages must dominate television and radio.

“The SABC’s top management and board must guard the broadcaster’s hard-won editorial independence and avoid complicity in any attempt to make it the mouthpiece of the governing African National Congress,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program in New York.

“It reeks of convenience that just a week after President Cyril Ramaphosa aired grievances about media coverage of the ANC, the State Security Agency under his control suddenly aims to subject SABC top editor Moshoeshoe Monare to the same security clearance as spy chiefs, including evaluating loyalty to the State. Authorities must back off.”

An April Ipsos opinion poll estimated support for the ANC in the upcoming election to be about 40% — a steep drop from the 57.5% of votes the party won in 2019 and a reflection of increasing discontent over poverty, unemployment, and corruption under ANC rule. The party has been in office since its landslide win in the historic 1994 election that ended white minority rule and brought Nelson Mandela to the presidency. 

Monare said in the SABC interview that he was vetted in 2020 for the post and answered questions as per his employment contract, which did not specify a polygraph. He said he found it strange that almost two years later, a mere month before the election, an intelligence agent suddenly informed him that he had to undergo a polygraph test.

A polygraph test is one of the government’s requirements for issuing Top Secret-level security clearance to senior intelligence leaders, including evaluating whether the person is “loyal to the State,” according to a 2020 statement to Parliament by the then-minister of state security.  

Monare said he had no objection to vetting, but wanted the SSA to explain the rationale for the polygraph and which individual had requested it. Monare said that neither the former SABC CEO Madoda Mxakwe – who appointed him – nor other senior colleagues had undergone polygraph tests during their vetting. Mxakwe did not reply to a CPJ request for comment.

According to Intelwatch, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening oversight of state and private intelligence actors, the SABC board – appointed by the president on the recommendation of Parliament – has the discretion to decide which staff members will be subjected to vetting under the National Strategic Intelligence Act.

However, invasive polygraph tests should be reserved only to protect South Africa against the most severe national security threats, not as part of routine employment processes, Intelwatch’s Professor Jane Duncan, a board member, and Heidi Swart, researcher and journalism coordinator, told CPJ via email.

“It is difficult not to conclude that vetting is being used to probe those journalists [because] the ANC is concerned [they] may report negatively ahead of the upcoming national election,” said Duncan and Swart.

Presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya told the media that Monare was not being targeted ahead of the election and that Ramaphosa would never sanction intimidation or harassment of journalists, as this would be contrary to the constitutional bill of rights, which protects press freedom.

In its statement, the SABC said there was “nothing sinister” about the vetting and all its executives were subjected to this because the broadcaster was a national key point, a phrase used to describe critical infrastructure deemed essential for South Africa’s economy, national security, or public safety.) SABC spokesperson Mmoni Seapolelo forwarded the earlier press release to CPJ but did not respond to its query about whether the vetting included a polygraph for all SABC executives.

Civil society groups and journalists have recently raised concerns that intelligence agencies could soon be given the power to vet any individual or institution, including the SABC, threatening journalistic independence.

State Security Agency spokesperson Sipho Mbhele referred CPJ to presidential spokesman Magwenya’s earlier statement.

In 2022, Monare’s predecessor as SABC’s head of news, Phathiswa Magopeni, was fired following a disciplinary hearing over the airing of an interdicted program. Magopeni alleged in a grievance letter to the SABC board and a public statement that she was targeted for political reasons as she had resisted attempts by senior SABC officials to force her to carry out an unscheduled interview with Ramaphosa during the 2021 local government election campaign. Magopeni and the SABC settled out of court.

Magopeni’s removal came soon after the ANC’s then-election manager, Fikile Mbalula, accused her and the SABC of being partly responsible for the party’s poor performance in the 2021 local government elections. ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Benghu did not respond to CPJ’s repeated calls and messages, while Mbalula directed queries to Benghu.

Editor’s note: Quintal, a former editor at three South African newspapers, previously worked with Monare at several of the country’s media outlets.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Assam’s roads – Before and after Modi Government pic.twitter.com/baIwad7Vxc

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (Modi Ka Parivar) (@himantabiswa) April 25, 2024

Fact Check

In the part of the video that apparently shows roads before the Modi government came to power, we spotted a car with the registration number AS01DT6808. Upon checking this registration number on the CarInfo website, Alt News found that the vehicle had been registered on August 2, 2018. This means that the video of the potholed road was not from before the Modi government came into power, but from 2018 or later, when the BJP was in power both in Assam and at the Centre.

BJP has been in power in the state since May 24, 2016, and at the Centre since May 26, 2014, with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.

The video posted by Himanta Biswa Sarma was edited and flipped, so we have flipped it back in the screenshot below to display the car’s registration number correctly.

In the same video, a car with LED daytime running lamps (DRLs) resembling arrows can also be seen. Upon searching, we discovered that this vehicle is a Hyundai Grand i10 Nios Facelift launched in 2023. This model introduced the new DRL design. Several news websites and automotive magazines had also published reports about this new design. Therefore, the clip depicting the broken road, claimed by Himanta Biswa Sarma to be from before the Modi government, is actually from 2023 or later.

To sum it up, the clips of potholed and waterlogged roads tweeted by Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma as the condition of roads before the Modi government were definitely shot after the Modi government had come to power in 2014.   

The post Assam CM’s blooper: Car registered in 2018, 2023 facelift model in Sarma’s tweet showing roads ‘before Modi govt’ appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

New Zealand needs to get tough with Israel. It’s not as if we haven’t done so before.

When NZ authorities busted a Mossad operation in Auckland 20 years ago, the government didn’t say: “Oh well, Israel has the right to defend itself.”

No, it arrested, prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned and deported the Israeli agents, plus made them pay a big sum of damages. And it refused to restore normal diplomatic relations with Israel until Israel apologised to NZ. Which Israel did.

• READ MORE: Israeli agents jailed in NZ over spy case

Today’s government needs to treat Israel the same way it treats other aggressors, like Russia, with the likes of sanctions.

And the government needs to designate Zionism as an inherently racist, terrorist ideology.

Everyone knows that the Gaza War would stop in five minutes if the US stopped arming Israel to the teeth and allowing it to commit genocide with impunity.

Israel is the mass murderer; the US is the enabler of mass murder.

New Zealand is part of the US Empire. The most useful thing we could do is to sever our ties to that empire, something we bravely started in the 1980s with the nuclear-free policy. Also, do these things:

• Develop a genuinely independent foreign policy;
• Get out of US wars, like the one in the Red Sea and Yemen;
• Get out of the Five Eyes spy alliance;
• Close the Waihopai spy base and the GCSB, the NZ agency which runs it;
• Kick out Rocket Lab, NZ’s newest American military base;
• Stop the process of getting entangled with NATO; and
• Stay out of AUKUS, which is simply building an alliance to fight a war with China.

I never thought I’d find myself on the same side of an issue as Don Brash and Richard Prebble but even they have strongly opposed AUKUS.

Zionism is the enemy of the Palestinian people.

US imperialism is the enemy of the Palestinian people and the New Zealand people.

Murray Horton is secretary/organiser of the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) and gave this speech last Saturday to a Palestinian solidarity rally at the Bridge of Remembrance, Christchurch.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

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The U.S. Army, the country’s largest military branch, will no longer allow military commanders to decide on their own whether soldiers accused of certain serious crimes can leave the service rather than go on trial.

The decision comes one year after ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Military Times published an investigation exposing how hundreds of soldiers charged with violent crimes were administratively discharged instead of facing a court martial.

Under the new rule, which goes into effect Saturday, military commanders will no longer have the sole authority to grant a soldier’s request for what is known as a discharge in lieu of court martial, or Chapter 10, in certain cases. Instead, the newly created Office of Special Trial Counsel, a group of military attorneys who specialize in handling cases involving violent crimes, must also approve the decision. Without the attorneys’ approval, charges against a soldier can’t be dismissed.

The Office of Special Trial Counsel will have the final say, the Army told the news organizations.

The new rule will apply only to cases that fall under the purview of the Office of Special Trial Counsel, including sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, kidnapping and murder. In 2021, Congress authorized creation of the new legal office — one for each military branch except the U.S. Coast Guard — in response to yearslong pressure to change how the military responds to violent crimes, specifically sexual assault, and reduce commanders’ control over that process. As of December, attorneys with this special office, and not commanders, now decide whether to prosecute cases related to those serious offenses.

Army officials told the news organizations that the change in discharge authority was made in response to the creation of the Office of Special Trial Counsel.

As far back as 1978, a federal watchdog agency called for the U.S. Department of Defense to end its policy of allowing service members accused of crimes to leave the military to avoid going to court. Armed forces leaders continued the practice anyway.

Last year, ProPublica, the Tribune and Military Times found that more than half of the 900 soldiers who were allowed to leave the Army in the previous decade rather than go to trial had been accused of violent crimes, including sexual assault and domestic violence, according to an analysis of roughly 8,000 Army courts-martial cases that reached arraignment. These soldiers had to acknowledge that they committed an offense that could be punishable under military law but did not have to admit guilt to a specific crime or face any other consequences that can come with a conviction, like registering as a sex offender.

The Army did not dispute the news organizations’ findings that the discharges in lieu of trial, also known as separations, were increasingly being used for violent crimes. An Army official said separations are a good alternative if commanders believe wrongdoing occurred but don’t have the evidence for a conviction, or if a victim prefers not to pursue a case.

Military law experts contacted by the news organizations called the Army’s change a step in the right direction.

“It’s good to see the Army has closed the loophole,” said former Air Force chief prosecutor Col. Don Christensen, who is now in private practice.

However, the Office of Special Trial Counsel’s decisions are not absolute. If the attorneys want to drop a charge, the commander still has the option to impose a range of other administrative punishments, Army officials said.

Christensen said he believes commanders should be removed from the judicial process entirely, a shift he said that the military has continued to fight. Commanders often have little to no legal experience. The military has long maintained that commanders are an important part of its justice system.

“They just can’t break away from commanders making these decisions,” said Christensen, who’s been a vocal critic of commanders’ outsize role in the military justice system. “They’re too wedded to that process.”

The Army told the newsrooms that additional changes to DOD and Army policy would be required to remove commanders entirely and instead give the Office of Special Trial Counsel full authority over separations in lieu of trial.

The news organizations reached out to several military branches to determine how the creation of the Office of Special Trial Counsel will affect their discharge processes. The U.S. Navy has taken steps similar to the Army’s. In the U.S. Air Force, the Office of Special Trial Counsel now makes recommendations in cases involving officers, and the branch is in the process of changing the rules for enlisted members. The U.S. Marines confirmed to the news organizations that it has not yet changed its discharge system.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by .

In a historic ruling, Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court has upheld an 1864 law banning almost all abortions in the state. The court sent out this warning: “Physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal.” The 160-year-old law predates Arizona becoming a state and was passed decades before women could even vote. Although Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes said she will not enforce the “draconian law,” the ruling sent shockwaves across the nation. “The central strategy of the anti-abortion movement is to roll back the clock to the Victorian era, because they know that they cannot win through the democratic process,” says Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent at The Nation, who says conservatives supporting these unpopular restrictions face an uphill battle this fall. “Democrats are banking on this being a huge way to lift their boats in the next election.” Activists are preparing a November ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution, and reproductive rights will be a key issue in the state’s closely watched Senate race.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The “60 Minutes” report found evidence that suggests Russia is behind numerous “anomalous health incidents” that have left dozens of American diplomats with prolonged injuries following sudden head pressure, dizziness or head or ear pain.

The incidents date back to 2016, when officials working at the U.S. Embassy in Havana began reporting the symptoms.

The March 31 report said there were two separate incidents in Hanoi that affected 11 American officials – two U.S. Embassy officials and nine members of a U.S. Department of Defense advance team ahead of Harris’ Aug. 24-26, 2021, visit.

The CBS report suggested that either Russian officials or Vietnamese officials were involved, and that Russia provided Vietnam with equipment that uses “directed, pulsed radio frequency” to injure its targets.

Another possibility, according to the report, was that Vietnamese officials weren’t aware of the dangerous effect of the Russian equipment and believed it was only for surveillance. 

The report provides evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the provision to Vietnam’s security services of Long Range Acoustic Device, or LARD, emitters and short wave equipment for human body scanning technology.

‘Hanoi wouldn’t dare to do this’

Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy, told Radio Free Asia that it’s unlikely that Vietnamese officials would have motive to harm American officials.

“While Vietnam’s security services had every incentive to eavesdrop on American officials prior to and during Vice President Harris’ visit to Hanoi, they did not have an incentive to cause deliberate physical harm to U.S. officials,” he said.

Vu Minh Tri, a former Vietnamese military intelligence officer, agreed, saying in a message to RFA that Vietnamese officials wouldn’t do something so “ignorantly unjustifiable.”

“Hanoi wouldn’t dare to do this,” he said. “Vietnam would use LARD to suppress the people in the country, but wouldn’t do this to the United States.”

Flight delayed

Harris’ flight into Hanoi from Singapore was delayed for several hours because one U.S. diplomat was being medevaced out of Vietnam, according to the CBS report.

She was the first U.S. vice president to travel to Vietnam since the unification of the country under the Communist North in 1975. Her two-day visit came a month after U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in Hanoi for meetings with Vietnamese officials.

Harris spoke with Vietnam’s leaders about shared efforts to counter “bullying” by China in the South China Sea. 

She announced during her trip that the United States would donate another 1 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine following an earlier donation of 5 million doses. She also launched the new Southeast Asia regional office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Hanoi.

In its 2024 threat assessment issued in February, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that it was “unlikely” that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents. 

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Monday that it “has been the broad conclusion of the intelligence community since March 2023 that is unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible” for the incidents. 

RFA sent an email to a Vietnamese government spokesperson seeking comment on the CBS News report, but there was no immediate response.

Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

Over the past decade, countries around the world have sought to limit the advertising of “toddler formula,” a powdered drink that often promises to improve children’s brains, immunity and eyesight.

Public health experts and advocates have backed the proposed restrictions, saying that the marketing of toddler milk can mislead parents about its health benefits and even convince some to choose formula over breastfeeding. The concerns echo those made about infant formula marketing, which many countries have banned for years.

This story works best on ProPublica's website.

Industry sales, however, have not only persisted but boomed — with the help of a powerful ally: the United States government. As ProPublica reported this week, federal trade agencies have worked in tandem with formula companies to fight restrictions on formula marketing in international forums while also pressuring individual countries to water down or strike their own laws.

While these battles typically play out behind the scenes, ProPublica obtained thousands of pages of government records that provide a rare window into one of the more consequential campaigns of recent years. It happened during the Obama administration in 2016, as member nations of the World Health Organization (known collectively as the World Health Assembly) considered a resolution encouraging limits on the marketing and promotion of foods aimed at infants and young children, including toddler formula.

Concerned that the measure would inspire new laws against formula marketing, the industry spent millions lobbying various U.S. agencies to intervene.

Documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request show a stark pattern: representatives of U.S. trade agencies aggressively sought to weaken the WHO resolution while officials from the health agencies scrambled to defend the measure. One Microsoft Word document cataloged dozens of comments and objections.

This visualization captures four of the divisions between the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which advises the president on trade, and federal health entities such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Explore the full visualization on ProPublica's website.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lucas Waldron and Heather Vogell.

Yet China's state broadcaster CCTV was faster than any of them -- it beat out its competitors by posting the results of the vote to its news client on social media platforms nearly 20 minutes before Council members had even started voting.

The Council's 89 lawmakers, all of whom won their seats under new electoral rules that allow only “patriots” loyal to Beijing to stand, voted unanimously to pass the Safeguarding National Security Law, that makes treason, insurrection and sabotage punishable by up to life in prison.

In scenes reminiscent of China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress, lawmaker after lawmaker stood up to extol the benefits of the law, which will likely widen an ongoing crackdown on peaceful dissent, according to its critics.

Many had dressed for the occasion.

"Many government officials and members wore purple clothing and accessories, the theme color for Article 23, to show their support at the LegCo [Legislative Council] on Tuesday," the nationalist Global Times reported. 

Schoolchildren turned up to see what Chief Executive John Lee described as a "historic" vote in their city's legislature, the paper said.

Lawmakers name-checked all the key ruling Chinese Communist Party talking points around the law, saying it was a necessary move to "ensure the safety of life and property" in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

That movement called for fully democratic elections, the results of which can be surprising, and are never known in advance.

Digs and accusations

Councilor Dominic Lee added a dig at "hypocritical" former colonial governor Lord Patten of Barnes, while repeating the government's line that the law is no different from national security laws in democratic nations, despite the prosecution of dozens of activists and politicians for "subversion," for organizing a democratic primary in the summer of 2020.

Lawmaker Elizabeth Quat accused the United States of "demonizing the law."

There was so much praise and defense of the law that deliberations didn't conclude until 6:48 p.m. local time.

But for those who couldn't wait for the results of the historic vote, CCTV was there at 6:33 p.m., informing its readers: "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Legislative Council passes 'Safeguarding National Security Law' on third reading."

It wasn't until after 6:48 p.m. that voting began in the Legislative Council chamber, nearly 20 minutes later.

Exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui said the Council, once the scene of vigorous political debate, regular protests, thrown objects and uncertain outcomes, is clearly now just another rubber-stamp body with voting results that are a foregone conclusion.

"The Legislative Council is just a rubber stamp ... and is just there to serve Beijing's political goals," Hui said. 

"There is no longer any difference between the National People's Congress and LegCo."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

The states and tribes within the Colorado River basin have been fighting over the waterway for more than a century, but these three forces have come to a head over the past few years. As a severe drought shriveled the 1,450-mile river in 2022, negotiators from the seven states crisscrossed the country haggling over who should have to cut their water usage, and how much. As the arguments dragged on, the Biden administration chastised states for letting the water levels in the river’s two main reservoirs fall to perilous lows. The Navajo Nation, the largest tribe on the river, went before the Supreme Court to argue for more water access.

These issues are all converging ahead of this fall’s presidential election, which could upend negotiations by ushering in a new Congress and new leadership at the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the river. With the clock running out, two major deals are now taking shape. They could fundamentally alter the way states and tribes use the river, bringing about a fairer and more sustainable era on the waterway — if they don’t fall apart by November.

The first deal would see the states of the river’s so-called Lower Basin commit to lowering their water usage by as much as 20 percent even during wetter years, addressing a decades-old water deficit driven by Arizona and California. There are still questions about how much water the states of the Upper Basin, led by Colorado and Utah, will agree to cut, but state leaders expressed optimism that a final agreement between all seven states will come together in the next few months. 

“This is not a problem that is caused by one sector, by one state, or by one basin,” said John Entsminger, the lead river negotiator for Nevada, in a press conference announcing the Lower Basin’s plan to cut water usage. “It is a basin-wide problem and requires a basin-wide solution.” 

The second deal would deliver enough new river water to the Navajo Nation to supply tens of thousands of homes, ending a decades-long legal fight on a reservation where many residents rely on deliveries of hauled water. 

If both of these deals come to fruition, they would represent a sea change in the management of a river that supplies 40 million people with water. But neither one is guaranteed to come together, and the clock is ticking as the election nears. 

The last time the seven river states drafted rules for how to deal with droughts and shortages was in 2007, long before the current megadrought reached its peak, and these rules are set to expire at the end of 2026. This deadline has triggered a flurry of talks among state negotiators, who are trying to reach a deal on new drought rules this spring. This would give the Biden administration time to codify the new rules before the presidential election in November, which states fear could tank the negotiations by thrusting a new administration into power.

The furious pace of negotiation is nothing new, but states have until now only managed to agree on short-term rules that protect the river over the next three years. Last summer, the states agreed to slash water usage in farms and suburbs across the Southwest in exchange for more than a billion dollars of compensation from the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress. That agreement helped stave off a total collapse of the river system, but it never represented a permanent solution to the river’s water shortage.

As the states turn their attention to a long-term fix, the political coalitions on the river have shifted. The marquee conflict last year was between California and Arizona, the two largest users, who disagreed over how to spread out painful water cuts. California argued that its older, more senior rights to the river meant that Arizona should absorb all the cuts even if it meant drying out areas around Phoenix. Arizona argued in turn that California’s prosperous farmers needed to bear some of the pain. In the end, the money from the Inflation Reduction Act helped paper over those tensions, as did a wetter-than-average winter that restored reservoir levels.

But now California and Arizona are on the same side. The two states, which along with Nevada make up the river’s “Lower Basin,” have pledged to cut water usage by as much as 1.5 million acre-feet even when reservoir levels are high, without federal compensation like that provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. The details still need to be hashed out, but these cuts would likely mean far less cotton and alfalfa farming in the region around Phoenix, tighter water budgets in many Arizona suburbs, and a decline in winter vegetable production in California’s Imperial Valley, an agricultural hub that is considered the nation’s “salad bowl.” 

This cut would free up enough water to supply almost 3 million households annually and would address the longstanding issues in the river’s century-old legal framework, which relied on faulty measurements of the river’s flow and thus guaranteed too much total water to the states. Experts have estimated the overdraft to be around 1.5 million acre-feet, the same amount that the Lower Basin is now signaling that it’s willing to give up, even before drought measures kick in.

The harder question is what to do during the driest years. The Lower Basin states are arguing that the seven states of the river should reduce their water usage by almost 3.9 million acre feet during the driest years, equivalent to about a third of the river’s total average flow. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico have a very different view: in a competing plan also released on Wednesday, they argued that the Lower Basin states should absorb the entirety of that 3.9 million acre-feet cut.

“If we want to protect the system and ensure certainty for the 40 million people who rely on this water source, then we need to address the existing imbalance between supply and demand,” said Becky Mitchell, the lead Colorado River negotiator for the state of Colorado, in a press release following the release of the Upper Basin’s plan. “That means using the best available science to work within reality.”

A representative from Colorado said the Upper Basin would keep investing in voluntary programs that pay farmers to use less water, but insisted that Arizona and California should bear the brunt of drought response.

Disagreement between the two regions is nothing new. The Upper Basin has often argued during past dry spells that, since it’s the Lower Basin that pulls water from Lake Powell and Lake Mead, it’s the Lower Basin that should cut usage when those reservoirs run low. 

But the commitment by Arizona and California to slash their water consumption for good even during wet years represents a significant breakthrough from previous talks, according to John Fleck, a professor at the University of New Mexico who has studied the Colorado River for decades. Fleck believes the Upper Basin states should make a voluntary commitment in turn, even though they have never used their full share of the river’s water.

“The idea behind what the Lower Basin is proposing is, ‘We recognize that we have to forever and permanently fix the structural deficit,’” he said. “That’s huge. My concern is that the Upper Basin’s approach to these negotiations is passing up an opportunity for a really useful compromise.”

Entsminger, the Nevada negotiator, conceded that wide gaps remain between the Upper Basin and Lower Basin proposals, but expressed optimism that the states would find an agreement.

“I know the sexy headline is going to be, ‘four versus three, states on the brink,’ but we are at one step in this process,” he said.

The other major water deal coming into focus would also rectify a longstanding issue in the river’s legal framework: its exclusion of Native American tribes. The dozens of tribal nations along the Colorado River have theoretical rights to river water, but they must sue the federal government to realize those rights, under a precedent known as the Winters doctrine. Some of those tribes, like Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community, have settled with the government for huge volumes of water, but others have been tied up in court for years.

The Navajo Nation, whose reservation stretches across much of Arizona and New Mexico, is among the largest tribes with so-called un-settled rights. The tribe has been suing the federal government for decades to obtain rights to the Colorado River as well as other waterways. Last year, the Supreme Court appeared to deal the Nation a serious setback when it ruled that the Biden administration didn’t have an obligation to study the Nation’s potential rights to the Colorado River.

In the aftermath of that Supreme Court defeat, tribal leaders set to work hashing out a landmark settlement that covers not only the Colorado River but also several of its tributaries, working with federal and state governments to resolve decades of litigation across numerous different court cases. 

The work has now culminated in a sprawling legal agreement between the Navajo, the neighboring Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribes, the Biden administration, Arizona, and more than a dozen other water users in the Southwest. The agreement would deliver at least 179,000 acre-feet of fresh water to parts of the reservation that currently rely on depleted aquifers or bottled water deliveries, enough to supply almost half a million average homes annually. This new water would come from entities like the state of Arizona and the Salt River Project water utility, who are voluntarily giving up their water to the Navajo to avoid the threat of further litigation. (The average Navajo Nation household uses around 7 gallons of water per day, less than a tenth of the national average.)

Not only would the settlement revolutionize water access on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, it will also resolve a huge uncertainty for Lower Basin states. A trial victory for the Navajo Nation would likely have slashed Arizona’s water supply, potentially reallocating much of Phoenix’s water system to the tribe.

“Given the background of climate change and the [seven-state] negotiations, just knowing what rights everyone has is really good,” said Heather Tanana (Diné), a law professor at the University of Utah who studies tribal water rights. “There’s this certainty now.”

But the success of this deal is far from a foregone conclusion, Tanana added. The settlement needs to be ratified by Congress and signed by the president. Congress must also provide billions of dollars for infrastructure that would pipe water from the Colorado River and its tributaries across the reservation. Tribal leaders are optimistic that the current Congress will support the deal, but they’re anxious that lawmakers won’t push it through before the November election. Past water settlements on the reservation have taken years to secure congressional approval and decades to actually construct.

The outlines of a potential solution are visible in both the interstate negotiations and the Navajo settlement, but both deals are a long way from being finalized. Time is of the essence; many observers are concerned that a second Trump administration would take a more lax approach to water management on the Colorado River than the Biden administration has, and that a shift in the control of Congress could scramble support for the Navajo deal.

The political jockeying of the next few months will go a long way toward determining the river’s future, said Elizabeth Koebele, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies water negotiations.

“These decisions now are very consequential for whether we’re going to pivot toward long-term sustainability in the basin,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline States and tribes scramble to reach Colorado River deals before election on Mar 6, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

Image by CHUTTERSNAP.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza will be remembered as the moral collapse of the West.

As soon as the Israeli war began, following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, every moral or legal frame of reference that Washington and its western allies supposedly held dear was suddenly dropped. Western leaders rushed to Israel, one after the other, offering military, political and intelligence support – along with a blank check to rightwing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals to torment the Palestinians.

The likes of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, went as far as joining Israel’s first war council meeting, so that he could take part in the discussion which directly resulted in the Gaza genocide.

“I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew,” he said on October 12. The interpretation of these words is disturbing, no matter how it is spun, but it also ultimately means that Blinken has lost all credibility as an American, as a politician or even as a fair-minded human being.

His boss, President Joe Biden, as if in an infinite loop, has been, for years, repeating that “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist”. Indeed, he has lived up to his maxim, declaring, time and again, “I am a Zionist.” Indeed, he is.

Like many other US and western officials and politicians, the US President abandoned international and humanitarian laws altogether, even the law of his own country. The Leahy Law “prohibits the US Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.” Instead, he, like Blinken, subscribed to tribal affiliation and ideological notions, which simply added fuel to the fire.

Though “protected persons” under international law, Palestinians seem dispensable, in fact, irrelevant to the point that their collective death appears critical for Israel to regain its ‘deterrence’, and to protect itself, in the words of Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, against the “human animals” of Gaza.

If there is a stronger word than hypocrisy, one would have used it. But, for now, it would have to suffice.

At the beginning of the war, many rightly drew a parallel between the West’s reaction to Gaza and their enraged response to the war in Ukraine. However, as the death toll grew, this comparison seemed inadequate. Over 12,000 children have been killed in Gaza in 140 days of war, compared to 579 in the two-year Russia-Ukraine war.

Yet, when the EU Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, was asked, point blank, in an Al-Jazeera interview on November 20 about the violations of international law in Gaza, he offered two completely different answers. “I am not a lawyer,” he said, when the legality of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza were questioned. When the interviewer shifted to talk about Al-Aqsa Flood, Borrell had no qualms about the issue. “Yes, we consider that a war crime, for killing civilians in this apparent way without any reason,” he said.

This episode has not been repeated often in the US media, simply because few mainstream media journalists are bothered or, more accurately, dare to question Israel’s grisly behavior in the Gaza Strip.

However, when such opportunities arose, the flagrant hypocrisy was impossible to hide. Marvel, for example, at Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department, in response to rape allegations in both Gaza and Israel. When he was asked, on February 18, about allegations of rape by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian women in Gaza, his answer was that the US has urged Israel to “thoroughly and transparently investigate credible allegations”.

Compare this to his response to a question about unverifiable allegations of sexual assaults made by Palestinians against Israelis, although debunked even by Israel’s own media. “They’ve committed rape. We have no reason at all to doubt those reports,” he said at a press conference on December 4.

Such examples are produced daily by hundreds of western leaders, top officials and media organizations. Even now, when the death toll has broken all records of brutality in recent human history, they still speak of Israel’s “right to defend itself”, willfully ignoring the fact that Israel has forfeited this right as soon as it engaged in this prolonged aggression, starting in 1948.

Indeed, international law on the rules of wars and military occupation is situated within a framework – notably laid out by the Fourth Geneva Convention – that exists to defend the rights of the occupied, not the right of the Occupier.

This time-honored truth is obvious to the vast majority of humanity, save Washington and a few others.

As dozens of envoys from around the world testified before the International Court of Justice from February 19 to 26, protesting Israel’s horrific violence, protracted occupation and racial system of apartheid, the US sent its envoy to the highest Court in the world to lobby for something else entirely.

With the ironic title of “Acting legal adviser for the US State Department”, Richard Visek bizarrely urged the ICJ to ignore international law altogether. “The Court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to immediately and unconditionally withdraw from Occupied Territory,” he said.

For far too long, but especially since October 7, Western governments, starting with the US, have violated every last set of ethics, morality and laws that they themselves developed, drafted, promoted, even imposed on the rest of the world for many decades. Currently, they are practically dismantling their own laws, and the very ethical standards that led to their formation.

Now that some western leaders have begun to feel increasingly uncomfortable as the enormity of the Gaza genocide unfolds, a few, though bashfully, are declaring that Netanyahu may be ‘going too far’. Even so, not even an outright admission of responsibility would erase the fact that they are active participants in Netanyahu’s killing campaign.

When all is said and done, the blood of the horrifyingly high number of Palestinian victims will be shared equally between Tel Aviv, Brussels, London, Sidney and all other genocide apologists. A crime of this magnitude will never be forgotten or forgiven.

The post On Hypocrisy and Genocide – How Gaza Has Exposed the West Like Never Before  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. semiconductor firms must strengthen oversight of their foreign partners and work more closely with the government and investigative groups, a group of experts told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, saying the outsourcing of production overseas has made tracking chip sales more difficult, enabling sanctions evasion by Russia and other adversaries.

U.S. semiconductor firms largely produce their chips in China and other Asian countries from where they are further distributed around the world, making it difficult to ascertain who exactly is buying their products, the experts told the committee at a hearing in Washington on February 27.

The United States and the European Union imposed sweeping technology sanctions on Russia to weaken its ability to wage war following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia’s military industrial complex is heavily reliant on Western technology, including semiconductors, for the production of sophisticated weapons.

“Western companies design chips made by specialized plants in other countries, and they sell them by the millions, with little visibility over the supply chain of their products beyond one or two layers of distribution,” Damien Spleeters, deputy director of operations at Conflict Armament Research, told senators.

He added that, if manufacturers required point-of-sale data from distributors, it would vastly improve their ability to trace the path of semiconductors recovered from Russian weapons and thereby identify sanctions-busting supply networks.

The banned Western chips are said to be flowing to Russia via networks in China, Turkey, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

Spleeters said he discovered a Chinese company diverting millions of dollars of components to sanctioned Russian companies by working with U.S. companies whose chips were found in Russian weapons.

That company was sanctioned earlier this month by the United States.

'It's Going To Be Whack-A-Mole'

The committee is scrutinizing several U.S. chip firms whose products have turned up in Russian weapons, Senator Richard Blumenthal (Democrat-Connecticut) said, adding “these companies know or should know where their components are going.”

Spleeters threw cold water on the idea that Russia is acquiring chips from household appliances such as washing machines or from major online retail websites.

“We have seen no evidence of chips being ripped off and then repurposed for this,” he said.

“It makes little sense that Russia would buy a $500 washing machine for a $1 part that they could obtain more easily,” Spleeters added.

In his opening statement, Senator Ron Johnson (Republican-Wisconsin) said he doubted whether any of the solutions proposed by the experts would work, noting that Russia was ramping up weapons production despite sweeping sanctions.

“You plug one hole, another hole is gonna be opening up, it's gonna be whack-a-mole. So it's a reality we have to face,” said Johnson.

Russia last year imported $1.7 billion worth of foreign-made microchips despite international sanctions, Bloomberg reported last month, citing classified Russian customs service data.

Johnson also expressed concern that sanctions would hurt Western nations and companies.

“My guess is they're just going to get more and more sophisticated evading the sanctions and finding components, or potentially finding other suppliers...like Huawei,” Johnson said.

Huawei is a leading Chinese technology company that produces chips among other products.

James Byrne, the founder and director of the open-source intelligence and analysis group at the Royal United Services Institute, said that officials and companies should not give up trying to track the chips just because it is difficult.

'Shocking' Dependency On Western Technology

He said that the West has leverage because Russia is so dependent on Western technology for its arms industry.

“Modern weapons platforms cannot work without these things. They are the brains of almost all modern weapons platforms,” Byrne said.

“These semiconductors vary in sophistication and importance, but it is fair to say that without them Russia … would not have been able to sustain their war effort,” he said.

Byrne said the depth of the dependency on Western technology -- which goes beyond semiconductors to include carbon fiber, polymers, lenses, and cameras -- was “really quite shocking” considering the Kremlin’s rhetoric about import substitution and independence.

Elina Ribakova, a Russia expert and economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said an analysis of 2,800 components taken from Russian weapons collected in Ukraine showed that 95 percent came from countries allied with Ukraine, with the vast majority coming from the United States. The sample, however, may not be representative of the actual distribution of component origin.

Ribakova warned that Russia has been accelerating imports of semiconductor machine components in case the United States imposes such export controls on China.

China can legally buy advanced Western components for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and use them to manufacture and sell advanced semiconductors to Russia, Senator Margaret Hassan (Democrat-New Hampshire) said.

Ribakova said the manufacturing components would potentially allow Russia to “insulate themselves for somewhat longer.”

Ribakova said technology companies are hesitant to beef up their compliance divisions because it can be costly. She recommended that the United States toughen punishment for noncompliance as the effects would be felt beyond helping Ukraine.

“It is also about the credibility of our whole system of economic statecraft. Malign actors worldwide are watching whether they will be credible or it's just words that were put on paper,” she said.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

A Russian metals tycoon's assets in a company that produces a key component in making steel have reportedly been nationalized days after President Vladimir Putin criticized his management of his company.

Yury Antipov, 69, the owner of Russia’s largest ferroalloy company, was also questioned by investigators in Chelyabinsk, the Urals industrial city where his company is based, and released on February 26, according to local media.

Earlier in the day, the government seized his shares in Kompaniya Etalon, a holding company for three metals plants that reportedly produce as much as 90 percent of Russia’s ferroalloy, a resource critical for steelmaking.

Russia’s Prosecutor-General Office filed a lawsuit on February 5 to seize Etalon, claiming the underlying Soviet-era metals assets were illegally privatized in the 1990s. It also said the strategic company was partially owned by entities in “unfriendly” countries.

While campaigning for a presidential vote next month, Putin criticized Antipov on February 16 without naming him during a visit to Chelyabinsk, whose working-class residents are typical of the president’s electoral base.

Putin told the regional governor that the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant, the largest of Etalon’s five metals factories, had failed to reduce dangerous emissions as agreed in 2019 and the asset would be taken over even though the court had yet to hear the case on privatization.

“I think that all the property should be transferred to state ownership and part of the plant -- [where there is ecologically] harmful production -- should be moved outside the city limits,” Putin told Governor Aleksei Teksler.

In a closed hearing, a Chelyabinsk court approved the transfer of Etalon’s assets to the state, a move potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Antipov ranked 170 on Forbes 2021 list of richest Russians with a net worth of $700 million.

The nationalization of a domestic company owned by a Russian citizen is the latest in a series of about two dozen by the state since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Prosecutors have based their cases on illegal privatization, foreign ownership, criminal activity, or a combination of the three. A rare-metals producer whose owner had been critical of the war effort was among the other assets seized. l

The seizures contradict Putin’s repeated promises in the nearly quarter century he has been in power that he would not review the controversial 1990s privatizations. In return, businessmen were expected to be loyal to the Kremlin and stay out of politics, experts say.

That unofficial social contract had more or less functioned up until the war. Now businessmen are also expected to contribute to the war effort and support the national economy amid sweeping Western sanctions, experts say.

The current trend of state seizures has spooked Russian entrepreneurs and raised questions about whether that social contract is still valid.

U.S. Ties

Antipov began his business career in the 1990s selling nails, fertilizer, dried meats, and other goods. In 1996 he and his business partner plowed their profits into the purchase of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant and subsequently purchased four more metals plants in the ensuing years.

The plants sold some of their output in the United States, where the firm had a trading company.

Antipov received full control of the metals holding in 2020 when he split with his business partner. That year he put 25 percent of the company each in the names of his wife and two eldest sons, Sergei and Aleksei Antipov, according to Russian business registration records.

In 2022, the metal assets were transferred to the Etalon holding company, whose ownership was hidden. Ferroalloy prices surged in 2022 as the war triggered a spike in commodity prices.

A hit piece published by The Moscow Post in December -- six weeks before prosecutors launched the privatization case -- claimed Antipov paid himself a dividend of more than $300 million from 2021-2023 using a structure that avoids capital gains taxes. RFE/RL could not confirm that claim. The Moscow Post is a Russian-language online tabloid that regularly publishes compromising and scandalous stories.

According to public records, Antipov’s two sons own homes in the United States and may be U.S. citizens. Sergei Antipov founded the trading company around the year 2000 in the U.S. state of Indiana. If he and his brother together still own 50 percent of the company, prosecutors could potentially have grounds for seizure.

Russia has changed some laws regulating the purchase of large stakes in strategic assets since its invasion of Ukraine.

One is a 2008 law that requires foreign entities to receive state permission to buy large stakes in strategic assets. An exception had been made for foreign entities controlled by Russian citizens.

Under the change, a Russian citizen with dual citizenship or a residence permit in another country may be considered a “foreign” owner and must receive permission to own an asset.

Nationalization is among the punishments for failure to do so. Thus, if Antipov’s two sons are U.S. citizens or if they have U.S. residency permits, their combined 50 percent stake in the company could be seized.

This already happened to a Russian businessman from St. Petersburg. His business was determined to be strategic and seized after he received foreign residency.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

This article was produced in partnership with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, formerly a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, and The Marshall Project. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The right to an attorney is fundamental to the U.S. justice system. Yet, in a small Mississippi court off the interstate between Jackson and Memphis, that right is tenuous.

The two judges in Yalobusha County Justice Court appointed lawyers for just 20% of the five dozen felony defendants who came before them in 2022, according to a review of court records; nationally, experts estimate that lawyers are appointed to at least 80% of felony defendants at some point in the legal process because they’re deemed poor. In this court, the way these two judges decide who gets a court-appointed attorney appears to violate state rules meant to protect defendants’ rights. A few defendants have even been forced to represent themselves in key hearings.

Despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that everyone gets a lawyer even if they’re too poor to pay for one, most felony defendants in this court went without any representation at all before their cases were forwarded to a grand jury, according to a review of one full year of court files by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. (Read more about how we analyzed the court’s appointment rate in our methodology.)

“That is a huge problem,” said André de Gruy, who leads a state office that handles death penalty cases and felony appeals but has no power over local public defense. “I believe almost every one of those people would like a lawyer and is unable to afford one.”

For decades, civil rights advocates and legal reformers have complained that Mississippi is among the worst states in the country in providing attorneys for poor criminal defendants. It’s one of a handful of states where public defense is managed and funded almost entirely by local governments, and the way they do so varies greatly from county to county. Defendants in some places see appointed lawyers quickly and remain represented thereafter; elsewhere, sometimes right over the county line, defendants can wait months just to see a lawyer or can go long periods without having one at all.

The Mississippi Supreme Court, which oversees how state courts operate, has issued several rules in recent years that were intended to drive improvements. But it is up to locally elected judges to carry out those mandates, and there’s no oversight to make sure they’re doing it right.

Much like Mississippi, Texas places primary responsibility for public defense on counties. A state commission in Texas investigates the counties with low appointment rates; a felony appointment rate below 50% would raise serious questions about a county’s compliance with state law, according to current and former officials there. In Mississippi, state officials don’t even know how often judges appoint attorneys.

When people are arrested on felonies in Yalobusha County, a rural area in north Mississippi with just 12,400 residents, many have initial hearings in the county’s Justice Court. Judges there primarily handle misdemeanors. But when a felony defendant appears in their court, it falls to Judge Trent Howell and Judge Janet Caulder to deliver on the Sixth Amendment’s promise.

Caulder handles many initial hearings, where she’s required by state rules to find out whether a defendant is too poor to afford an attorney and to appoint one if so. Although Caulder informs defendants of their right to an attorney, she said she doesn’t ask if they can afford one and appoints one only if they request it.

“I don’t question them. I don’t try to force indigency on them,” she said. (Neither she nor Howell would comment on their appointment rate.)

Caulder and Howell are supposed to operate by the same rules as judges in circuit court, who handle felony cases from indictment through trial. But that doesn’t appear to be what’s happening: 15 of the cases that Howell and Caulder handled in 2022 are now in circuit court; just four of those defendants were appointed attorneys in Justice Court, but 13 were provided with lawyers when their cases moved to circuit court.

I don’t question them. I don’t try to force indigency on them.

Explaining why he is sometimes reluctant to appoint an attorney, Howell told the news outlets that he has a “fiduciary duty” to spend taxpayers’ money wisely. He said he’s more likely to provide a lawyer if a defendant is in jail because a lawyer can seek a lower bond to get their client released.

On the other hand, Howell said, “If they’re arrested on a felony and they’ve made bond, I’m not too quick to pull the trigger on a public defender — particularly if they’ve made a high bond.” State rules don’t allow Howell to consider whether someone made bond when he decides if he will appoint an attorney, but he said that doing so was just “human nature.”

That’s what happened when Kayla Williams, a single mother with no stable job, came before Howell last summer on a charge of shooting and wounding her stepfather in a tussle. Williams, whose mental health issues include bipolar disorder, has been arrested three times in the past year or so after confrontations with others. In two hearings related to the shooting charge, Howell refused to appoint an attorney even though she said she couldn’t afford one, according to Williams, as well as a lawyer who observed one hearing and a reporter who observed another.

In an interview, Howell defended his decision, which he made without asking a single question about Williams’ finances: “She just didn’t strike me as an indigent person.”

Though Mississippi doesn’t have any guidelines for how judges should decide who is poor enough to get a court-appointed lawyer, a half-dozen legal experts who reviewed the facts of Williams’ case said she appears to qualify and that her constitutional rights have been violated.

Problems getting a court-appointed lawyer began soon after she was arrested.

On June 12, Williams’ elderly stepfather, whose name is Lawyer Crowder, was pulled over by a Yalobusha County sheriff’s deputy because he was weaving slowly down a rural road. Crowder, whose leg was bleeding, told the deputy that his stepdaughter had shot him. He had the pistol she used with him.

Around the same time, Williams called 911 and said she had shot Crowder after he hit her, according to a dispatch log. Deputies arrested her and charged her with aggravated assault against a family member, a felony with a possible prison sentence of 20 years. (While Crowder told the news outlets that Williams started the fight and that he believes she meant to shoot him, he said: “I don’t want her put away. I want her to get some help.”)

At Williams’ first court hearing a couple of days later, Caulder told her she had a right to a court-appointed lawyer, but the judge didn’t ask Williams if she could hire one herself. The state’s rules required Caulder to make a decision that day: “The determination of the right to appointed counsel, and the appointment of such counsel, is to be made no later than at the indigent defendant’s first appearance before a judge.”

Caulder did gather the facts of Williams’ finances to set conditions for her release from jail — the same sort of information that judges use when deciding whether to appoint a lawyer. According to court records, the judge knew the 22-year-old mother had no job at the time and no place of her own to live.

What I witnessed in the courthouse in Water Valley that day was not a judge carefully exploring the ability of a defendant to afford a lawyer. … What I saw was an immediate rejection of her request for assistance without any inquiry whatsoever into her ability to pay.

That should have been enough to prompt Caulder to appoint a lawyer, said de Gruy, the head of the state public defense office. Caulder, however, said she believes she complied with court rules because she told Williams of her rights. She always does that, she said, and she’s always willing to consider a request for a lawyer.

Caulder shouldn’t force defendants to ask for a lawyer, said William Waller, a retired chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court who helped write the state’s court rules. That “is absolutely not right,” he said, because many defendants don’t know how or when to ask. “The judge makes the inquiry” to learn whether a defendant can afford an attorney, he said.

Williams’ friends and family paid a bail bond company to post a $7,500 bond to get her out of jail. Her next opportunity to get a lawyer came a month later, when she walked into Howell’s courtroom in Water Valley for a hearing.

Cliff Johnson, a civil rights attorney and law professor, happened to be in the courtroom that July day doing pro bono work for an animal shelter. Williams asked for a lawyer more than once, Johnson said. Howell said he wasn’t going to appoint one at that time.

“What I witnessed in the courthouse in Water Valley that day was not a judge carefully exploring the ability of a defendant to afford a lawyer,” Johnson said. “What I saw was an immediate rejection of her request for assistance without any inquiry whatsoever into her ability to pay.”

In an interview, Howell defended his decision in that hearing and a subsequent one: “I think that what I did at this particular point for this lady was within my discretion and proper.” He suggested that hearings in his court aren’t as critical to the outcome of a case as those in circuit court. However, the state’s rules say poor defendants must have a lawyer throughout the process.

Howell did tell Williams she could ask for a preliminary hearing, an optional hearing that defendants can request to force a prosecutor to show that there was probable cause for an arrest.

That’s how Williams found herself the following month in a crowded conference room that served as a courtroom, sitting at a table with the deputy who arrested her and the prosecutor handling her case. The prosecutor asked if she had an attorney.

“No, because the judge has not provided me with one,” Williams replied. Howell didn’t respond. After a brief exchange, the judge said he was ready to proceed with the hearing.

His decision to hold that hearing for a defendant who didn’t have a lawyer was particularly egregious, according to law professors, civil rights attorneys and a legal consultant. The U.S. Supreme Court requires that appointed counsel be present with a poor defendant at key hearings, called critical stages, at which the defendant’s rights could be impaired. Experts agree that a preliminary hearing in Mississippi is considered a critical stage.

“That is clearly a violation” of her rights, said David Carroll, who has studied Mississippi’s defense system as executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, a Boston-based nonprofit research center.

Without an attorney, Williams handled the hearing herself. She stammered as she cross-examined the deputy, who acknowledged that the case hinged largely on the stepfather’s account. “I’m nervous,” she said.

After the deputy testified, Howell told Williams there was no need for her to testify. Anything she said could be used against her later, he said, and he was prepared to rule that the case could move forward.

“I want to tell my side of the story,” Williams said.

“You’re going to testify over my recommendation,” the judge responded.

Williams did testify, stressing her belief that the gun was fired by accident. Testifying was a risky move, one that a defense lawyer likely would have prevented, said Jonathan Rapping, who runs the national nonprofit public defender training organization Gideon’s Promise. Williams’ hearing, he said, was “a textbook example of why you need a lawyer.”

After Howell ordered that Williams’ case could proceed to a grand jury, she made a direct appeal: “Can you appoint me a lawyer? Because I can’t afford one.”

Howell said that if she were eventually indicted, a judge in circuit court would decide whether she would be eligible for appointed counsel. But that might not happen, the judge said, until the next grand jury was convened in December, four months away.

Months later, as Williams waited for an update on that case, she had a different experience in another county. She had been arrested on two felony counts of arson after she acknowledged lighting two small fires in a homeless shelter she was staying in, according to a police report. Within 48 hours, she had a lawyer in Tupelo Municipal Court, which, unlike Yalobusha County Justice Court, employs a full-time public defender.

She had seen for herself what criminal justice reformers have long argued is a key problem with Mississippi’s locally controlled public defense system: While some local courts swiftly deliver lawyers to poor criminal defendants, others delay and deny representation for months without any oversight by the state. Multiple commissions and task forces have tried to address shortcomings in the public defense system over the years, but the Legislature hasn’t acted. So the state Supreme Court has wielded its authority over the courts below it.

Though its rules are mandatory, Mississippi’s Supreme Court relies on judges across the state to implement them. Those local judges don’t have a good track record, the Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica have found.

In 2017, the Supreme Court put all Mississippi courts under the same rules. Among them: Judges in each court would have to write down how they provide attorneys for poor defendants. The Supreme Court would review those policies and approve them.

Six years later, the first of the state’s 23 circuit courts complied. Since then, just two more have filed plans.

A similar lack of compliance emerged last summer, when the court took action to address poor defendants being left without legal representation between their initial court hearings and an indictment, a period that often lasts months and sometimes years.

We don’t hear from many places other than Mississippi of judges simply ignoring or deferring the question of whether the right to counsel applies.

A revised rule aims to eliminate that gap in representation — which critics have called the “dead zone” — by preventing a lawyer from leaving a case unless another has already taken over. On the eve of last summer’s deadline to comply, many local officials told the news outlets that they were unaware of the rule or contended they didn’t need to change their current practice.

But it’s not the Supreme Court’s role to go out and make sure judges follow these rules, a justice told legislators last fall. Although an individual defendant can petition to have their case dismissed if they have been denied a lawyer, the only way, outside of a lawsuit, to hold judges accountable for their actions is to file a complaint with a state judicial commission. The commission hasn’t publicly sanctioned any judges for denial of counsel in at least a decade.

In 2014, Mississippi’s Scott County was sued for practices similar to those in Yalobusha’s Justice Court. The county settled the suit in 2017 and, without admitting fault, agreed to hire a chief public defender and ensure that when people were arrested on a felony charge, they were provided with the paperwork to request a lawyer.

“We don’t hear from many places other than Mississippi of judges simply ignoring or deferring the question of whether the right to counsel applies,” said Lisa M. Wayne, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Johnson, the civil rights law professor, was among those who argued for the Supreme Court’s recent move to address the dead zone. He has argued that there’s important defense work to be done as defendants wait to be indicted, a view that puts him at odds with many judges and lawyers in Mississippi. The Supreme Court’s rule change went into effect in July; about a week later, he saw Howell deny Williams’ requests for an attorney.

“My fear is that this happens far more often than we know,” Johnson said. “I was reminded quickly that change comes hard in Mississippi.”

Howell, however, said he wants to go back to what he called “the old way,” to a time when the Supreme Court hadn’t spelled out so many procedural steps to follow before an indictment.

His view on the change that Johnson argued for, meant to ensure that a poor defendant always has a lawyer from arrest to trial? “Hopefully,” he said, “the Supreme Court will come down and modify that rule.”

Sometimes I get overwhelmed, but most of the time I’m just numb. … I’m tired. I’m only 22, but I feel like I’m 55.

Williams hasn’t gotten any updates on the case involving her stepfather since she saw Howell last summer. After repeatedly calling Yalobusha County officials, she recently learned that she hadn’t been indicted by the December grand jury there. It’s unclear when, or even if, she will be. Prosecutors in Mississippi face no deadline to seek an indictment, and the grand jury in that part of Yalobusha County typically meets three times a year. By the time the most recent grand jury met this month, she was in jail on the latest charges and couldn’t call anyone to check on last summer’s case.

“Sometimes I get overwhelmed, but most of the time I’m just numb,” Williams said. ”I’m tired. I’m only 22, but I feel like I’m 55.” If she had an attorney, Williams said, “I would understand more and have more trust” in the legal process.

But after she appeared in Tupelo Municipal Court on the arson charges, she said, “I actually had a lawyer this time.” In all the months she had been speaking to the news outlets, it was the first time she felt that the court system had worked the way she thought it was supposed to. In an interview from jail, she said that the public defender had explained what would happen in court and argued for a lower bond, which was eventually set at $30,000. “He was really informative,” she said, “and made things seem a little bit better and like I wasn’t by myself.”

The state of Mississippi does not collect data on how often judges provide an attorney to criminal defendants who are too poor to afford their own. Many counties don’t know that information either, even though each controls its own public defense system.

A task force that met from 2015 to 2018 found that it could not fully evaluate public defense in the state without knowing how often attorneys were appointed to indigent defendants. State officials surveyed circuit clerks, asking them to estimate their appointment rates. Circuit court clerks in 53 of 82 counties responded; the vast majority, including Yalobusha’s, estimated appointment rates of 75% or more in circuit court.

However, people arrested on felony charges make their first court appearance in lower courts, where judges are required to evaluate their ability to pay for an attorney and appoint one if needed. These courts handle only hearings that precede an indictment, after which cases are transferred to circuit court. In Yalobusha County, people arrested for a felony can have a first appearance in Water Valley Municipal Court or the county Justice Court.

To understand how frequently judges in Yalobusha County’s Justice Court appointed lawyers for defendants, a reporter traveled to the court clerk’s office and pulled the files for every felony case that was opened in 2022. We chose cases from 2022 because it was the most recent full calendar year and every case had had at least one opportunity to be presented to a grand jury for a possible indictment. We also reviewed files in another clerk’s office and billing records for attorneys appointed in Justice Court. We found 63 cases in which court records indicated that defendants appeared before a judge in Justice Court.

For each case, a reporter logged various facts, including the defendant’s name, the charge, hearing dates, the judge or judges that heard the case, and whether the file included an indigency affidavit, a judge’s order appointing an attorney or a letter from a lawyer stating that they had been retained in the case.

We counted the number of defendants who were provided counsel in Justice Court. (Defendants who appeared in court multiple times were counted once, even if they appeared on unrelated charges.) This number was used to calculate an appointment rate for 2022: 20%. In the majority of cases — 61% — the defendant had no attorney at all. (In a couple of cases, they waived their right to an attorney.)

In a few cases, notes in case files say that defendants told a judge they had hired an attorney or intended to, but there are no records showing they did so. We counted those defendants as privately represented, based on the case notes.

We excluded two cases from our analysis because we could not determine whether the lawyer listed had been appointed or hired.

Our reporter also checked Mississippi’s online court database to see how many of the 2022 cases had been moved to circuit court and how many of those defendants had been appointed lawyers there.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Caleb Bedillion, The Marshall Project.

Arguments are underway at the International Court of Justice, where more than 50 countries are asking the World Court to issue a nonbinding legal opinion against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967. The request is separate from South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ. “Israel has been instrumentalizing the rules of international humanitarian law … to further its settler-colonial project in Palestine,” says Ahmed Abofoul of the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, which submitted an advisory opinion on the case. “I have no doubt that the court will decide that Israel’s occupation is illegal,” he says. We also discuss what comes after the ruling and Israeli society’s reaction to the war.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Israeli troops stormed Nasser Hospital, the largest hospital in southern Gaza, on Thursday after days of besieging the complex, where thousands of displaced Palestinians have been taking shelter among hundreds of wounded. Israeli forces reportedly demolished the southern wall of the hospital before storming inside. Troops also targeted ambulances, tents of the displaced, and bulldozed mass graves inside the hospital. The assault came hours after Israeli forces bombed a wing of the hospital, killing one patient and wounding several others. Democracy Now! reached Dr. Khaled Alserr, one of the last remaining surgeons inside Nasser Hospital, shortly before the Israeli raid as he described desperate conditions inside. “The situation here is getting worse every time and every minute,” Alserr said, describing sniper, drone and tank attacks on the hospital.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Taichung Self-Training Group is a grassroots civilian defense operation that hopes to take the pressure off emergency services in the event of war or major disaster, its leader You Chiao-chun, a 36-year-old nurse, explains.

The point of the training is to ensure its members don't panic "when a real disaster occurs," You says, adding: "We have to be ready ourselves before we can help anyone else."

You's team is divided into groups to simulate a scenario in which volunteers help evacuate civilians across uneven terrain under enemy bombardment, offering first aid and physical assistance to the injured as they go.

You tells them that the trees are tall buildings that can rain shards of glass and other debris down on them, while the children's play equipment represents parked vehicles that could explode at any time.

Ukraine wake-up call

Ever since Russian tanks poured across the border into Ukraine in February 2022, meeting with stronger-than-expected military resistance and the mobilization of civilians throughout the country, people in democratic Taiwan have been focusing on the island's own defenses against a possible Chinese invasion.

As the government extends compulsory military service for men to one year and Taiwanese soldiers volunteer to defend freedom and democracy in Ukraine, civilians across the island are also organizing -- holding regular training sessions teaching fitness, first aid and disaster awareness.

Two years later, more than 20 groups are running in Taiwanese cities and counties, as part of a spontaneously organized and decentralized civilian defense movement.

You set up the Taichung group a year ago to prepare local people for what she terms the "compound disaster" of war, getting a handful of replies at first to a social media post. Now, the group has about 60 members, most of them working professionals, with 15-20 people typically attending an evening training session.

"For every person who trains to save themselves, more resources are freed up for people in greater need," You says.

Weight training, first aid

The group started out with weight training, so they would be able to carry heavy loads in the event of an emergency, then moved onto first-aid skills like bandaging and tourniquets.

Instructor Wei Ting was inspired to join by her personal memories of disaster -- when a massive earthquake hit her hometown on Sept. 21, 1999, cutting off her community from the rest of the world for two weeks.

"This experience motivated me to take action, and made me willing to take responsibility," says Wei, who now teaches high school and holds multiple first-aid qualifications and is a government-trained disaster relief volunteer.

The group's head instructor Luo Hsuan-hsuan is a physical therapist who has also worked as a paramedic. She supervises their physical training and devises training scenarios like the one in Taichung park.

The group is also working with local companies, schools and security organizations to deliver disaster response and rescue training to local people.

"The ideal self-training group is a mutual-help community where everyone can contribute their own expertise," You says, adding that she wants members to take what they have learned back to their schools, workplaces and families, and train more people.

It's a more rescue-based vision than the retired chip billionaire Robert Tsao's US$33 million Kuma Academy program, set up to train 3 million civilians in civil defense, including 300,000 snipers, so they could fight alongside regular and reserve forces in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Tsao, the 75-year-old founder of United Microelectronics Corps, reapplied for Taiwanese nationality in 2022 after naturalizing as a citizen of Singapore, saying he wanted to help in the fight against the military threat from Beijing.

Simulated battles

The program held two large-scale training drills under the code-name "Operation Magpie" last year, one challenging the forest survival skills of more than 100 trainees over an 8-hour period, and another simulating a wartime attack in downtown Taipei.

Groups were thrown into unfamiliar situations with just a few aerial photos of the area, with instructions to plan their way through the scenario, navigating simulated scenes of battle and civilian injuries, complete with sound-effects.

Kuma Academy CEO Ho Cheng-hui said the primary goal during a disaster is self-protection.

"[We want] at least one person in every household who is prepared for the threat of war, and knows what to do," Ho told RFA/The Reporter in a recent interview.

Another civil defense organization, the Forward Alliance, held a backup operations training day at Taipei's Huashan Park in September 2023, bringing in old vehicles and rescue equipment, and teaching people how to rescue others from car crashes, fires, earthquakes, shootings and other complex events.

The event ended with a surprise simulated "terrorist attack" on participants, who were forced to organize a mass evacuation on the spur of the moment, despite being exhausted.

Meanwhile, more than 50 people have joined the Tainan branch of the Citizens' League civil defense and rescue organization, which is currently applying to register as an official rescue organization under the Ministry of the Interior.

The 28-year-old founder of the Tainan Citizens' League, who gave only the nickname Jeff, said his group is working on a local map of potential high-risk military targets, including electrical substations, refineries and airports.

It has also developed a mobilization plan for Tainan that would see members gathering at designated locations in the wake of an attack or disaster, before moving ahead with further evacuation or disaster relief operations.

Women taking the lead

Liu Wen, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Ethnology at Taiwan's Academia Sinica said the civil defense movement is likely a coping mechanism in the face of anxiety over a possible invasion.

"That anxiety isn't going to go away for most people, but it can be organized and transformed," Liu said. "It can be turned into proactive energy, allowing people to start preparing, rather than just crying out in fear."

She said she has found that civil defense groups are often dominated by women, who have largely been left out of official defense and national security plans.

Figures from Kuma Academy and the Forward Alliance back up Liu's research, with women making up some 60% of Kuma Academy trainees in 2023, and around 70% of Forward Alliance volunteers.

"Taiwan's national defense and civil defense systems have long excluded women," Liu said. "Women haven't had the opportunity to learn about military issues. The only way they could do that would be to join the military."

She said women actually make ideal community leaders in disaster rescue and civil defense operations.

"They understand their own needs and those of their families very well, so they pay attention to detail, and are more efficient when preparing supplies," Liu said. "They're also more accustomed to cooperating with others."

A member of a Self-Training Group in the northern city of Taoyuan who gave only the nickname Emily is a full-time mother of two who doesn't always make it to every session, but she already has an evacuation plan for her family.

Her home has floor-to-ceiling windows in the vicinity of the Taoyuan Railway Station that is an obvious hazard in the event of war, earthquake or typhoon, so she has designated a safe area away from the window, where she stashes emergency supplies.

She also knows how she will get her kids out of the 10th floor apartment with the family's supplies, and the route they will take to their local evacuation point. 

None of her family is very interested when she tries to talk to them about it, however.

"They thought I was kicking up a fuss about nothing," she says, adding that she tells them that the Self-Training Group is just a fitness club.